A Navy Base and the Making of the Harbor
Near Morro Bay, California
The modern harbor of Morro Bay was forged in a hurry during the Second World War. In the tense final weeks of nineteen forty one, work began on a Navy amphibious training base along the willow lined shore of the bay, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The site was commissioned as a naval base in the spring of nineteen forty two.
Its mission was to teach soldiers and sailors the dangerous art of amphibious assault, storming a defended beach from landing craft, the exact skill they would need to leapfrog across the islands of the Pacific. At its busiest the base kept many landing craft on hand, and thousands of troops rehearsed hitting the beach. To make it all work, the Navy dredged the shallow bay deeper, cleared the dense willows, and built a protective jetty to guard the harbor mouth.
Using federal dollars, the Navy constructed the very waterfront structures that locals still call the Embarcadero during the war years. A wooden trestle bridge even reached across to the sandspit. The base was decommissioned in nineteen forty five, but the deepened harbor and the jetty it left behind remade Morro Bay into the working port it is today.
