Marinship Historic Site
Historic · Marinship Way, Sausalito, CA 94965
Verified September 2026
Photo by Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
From 1942 to 1945, this stretch of Sausalito waterfront was a wartime shipyard, built by the Bechtel-led Marinship Corporation. It launched its first keel within three months of getting the go-ahead, built 93 cargo ships and oil tankers, 15 Liberty ships and 78 T-2 tankers, and employed 20,000 people at its peak, a huge, dense workforce for a town this small. Walking Marinship Way now, past the boatyards, is walking through what's left of it.
What To Expect
A number of the original shipyard buildings still stand and now house boatyards, marine businesses, and artist studios, more surviving WWII emergency shipyard structures than almost anywhere else in the Bay Area. Marinship set a wartime production record in June 1945, when workers built and delivered the tanker SS Huntington Hills in just 33 days. The yard was also the site of James v. Marinship, a 1944 California Supreme Court case that struck down a shipbuilders' union's practice of excluding Black workers from full membership, an early civil-rights milestone that predates the postwar era Sausalito is usually associated with. When the yard shut down after the war, the leftover vessels and scrap became the raw material for the houseboat community. The Bay Model Visitor Center, a short walk away, has a permanent exhibit covering both threads of the story.
Getting There
Marinship Way runs along the waterfront near the Bay Model, easy to reach on foot or bike from downtown along Bridgeway. Liberty Ship Way, the road to Sea Trek and Schoonmaker Beach, runs through the same old shipyard grounds. Marinship Park itself has been closed since 2021 and the city has kept its lawn and restrooms fenced off since then; only the refurbished tennis and pickleball courts have reopened, for members, as of the latest city information we found. See our events guide for why, and what replaced the festival that used to fill the park every Labor Day.
Good To Know
This is a working waterfront, not a formal historic park. There's no admission or set hours, just streets and buildings you can walk past, so stay out of the way of working boats. The Marinship exhibit at the Bay Model keeps the Bay Model's hours (Tuesday through Saturday, closed federal holidays) and is the best single stop for the actual history. The Bay Model also posts a 30-minute Marinship oral-history video online if you want the story before you go. Allow about an hour if you combine the walk with the exhibit.
Our Take
Start inside at the Bay Model's Marinship exhibit, which collects photographs, memorabilia, and oral histories from the yard, then walk the streets outside. Once you've seen the photographs of the yard at full tilt, the low sheds and slipways read as what they are. Skip the fenced park and spend the time at the water's edge instead.