Talk:Mare Island

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Island or peninsula?

From the very first, when Elf created this article as a stub, it has said that Mare Island is a peninsula. This book of California Place Names agrees with that stance, as does this book from 1940, published by the California State Department of Education and the Federal Works Agency. That last book says it's a 3000-acre peninsula.

However, there are sources which describe it as surrounded by water. This book from 1920 compares Hunter's Point to Mare Island in terms of military defensibility, and concludes that Mare Island is more defensible that Hunter's Point, because Hunter's Point is a peninsula. The implication is Mare Island is not. Here's a book from 1954 which says, "It was a paradox of a serious nature that Mare Island, surrounded by water, never had enough of it..." That's pretty conclusively the defining feature of an island, being surrounded by water. This webpage calls Mare Island the "low sandy island in San Pablo Bay".

One of the biggest problems of the people who might argue that Mare Island is an island is that so many possibly good sources do not bother to define it as such. Once the writer writes "Mare Island", the island part does not jump out as needing further definition. The reader is assumed to understand that Mare Island is an island. On the other hand, the big problem for the peninsula argument is that the supposed peninsular land is wet, wet, wet. It is cut this way and that way by sloughs, creating a number of islands. So if Mare Island is called a peninsula, it could well be the peninsula of a marshy island complex, virtually an island of its own.

On the north side of Mare Island is Dutchman Slough, which cuts Mare Island off from other wetland tracts. To the northwest, Mare Island extends into undeveloped marsh, with Highway 37 (Sears Point Rd) built atop a berm to stay dry above the mud and water. Dutchman Slough 'T's into South Slough which extends west into China Slough, itself joining Napa Slough and opening into San Pablo Bay. This stretch could be considered one piece of land; an island. Somebody could paddle a kayak all the way around Mare Island and return to where they started. Binksternet (talk) 02:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm I've always wondered about this, too. My interest just begins and ends with having lived there for a few years back in the '60s. One certainly got the impression that it was an island going across the high bridge from Vallejo.

As it happens, I just watched the movie "The Englishman that went up a hill and came down a mountain" . If you haven't seen it, it deals with a couple of mapmakers who will designate whether a town's prized landform is a 'hill' or a 'mountain' by specific definitions. Is there a comparable organization here that makes those designations? National Geographic? US Geological Survey? The fuzziness seems to derive from the 'wetlands' and marshes... do they count as water or land - which would define whether MI is an island or peninsula, I should think.

I'm also wondering if this changes over time... either seasonally, with tides, over decades? (perhaps in the 1920s the ecology was significantly different). No answers to the problem, I'm afraid. Wikipelli ^Talk 09:58, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Time for me to see that movie again! I tried to find a study from one of the bodies who might determine island or peninsula, and came up empty. Clearly I'm not looking in the right places. Binksternet (talk) 14:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look around USGS this morning but didn't find anything 'definition-like'. It seems as though they would be the organization that would 'officially' say island/penninsula, hill/mountain, etc. I have a friend who is a cartographer, I'll ask him. Wikipelli ^Talk 14:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am rolling up to this nine-year-old discussion section to say that I've added a {{by who}} to the lede because I don't see any cited stuff in the article saying that it's considered a peninsula. (Also, Michigan would not be an island under any definition of sloughs as bodies of water -- while part of the Toledo Strip was indeed swampland, the western portion of was always solid soil with good drainage.) { $\mathbb {JPG}$ } 22:10, 16 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. Navy Technical Schools

I was stationed at Mare Island from 1973-1974, where I attended Missile FireControl Technician (FTM-'C' School) for the Tartar Missile system. I have added references to that and other schools there to the article's text. I do not know how to add an authoritative reference.

I served there with students at the Communications Technician (CT School) and at the nuclear power school. - FTM1 David W. Vosper, USS Towers, DDG-9, 1974-1977. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.153.24.155 (talk) 22:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. Navy Shipyard

I added the section about the USS Guitarro sinking while under construction and still tied up to the pier. Dave Vosper. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.153.24.155 (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How about more discussions of the important vessels that were primarily built here but also stationed here. 2600:1700:B320:77D0:C0B6:A96A:7C35:33BE (talk) 15:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Why Govt use???

_On November 6, 1850, two months after California was admitted to statehood, President Fillmore reserved Mare Island for government use._

Why?? What about this bit of the bay was so attractive for Govt. use? Did Naval surveyor Lt. Comm. William Pope McArthur's Aug 1850 purchase of a 1/16 interest in this property have anything to do with it? How much influence did he have on the 1852 committee who selected Mare Island for use as a shipyard?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.180.43.199 (talk) 19:21, 6 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]