MARE ISLAND A RICH PAST ...

Despite its name, Mare Island is no longer an D island, and there aren't any horses. Rather, it's a 3.5 miles-long peninsula (attached to the mainland by fill from dredging), situated where the Napa River meets the San Pablo Bay, 23 miles north of San Francisco. It's connected to the city of Vallejo by Highway 37 and a causeway.

The land was once the property of General Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who helped shape California's transition from a territory of Mexico to a state. Lore is, Vallejo's prized white horse was thought to be lost in a ferry accident but was later discovered unhurt on the peninsula, creating a legend and giving the territory its name.

The U.S. Navy purchased the land in 1853, putting the outpost first under the command of Commodore David Farragut (best-known for shouting, "Damn the torpedoes.

Full speed ahead!"). For nearly a century-and-a-half, Mare Island was among the largest U.S. Naval stations on the West Coast. At the base's height of activity during the second World War, a slew of busses and ferries brought 45,000 workers there daily.

In 1993, Congress voted to close its Naval operations, part of a broader military downsizing effort, finally shuttering it in 1996. The closure laid off thousands of workers, a blow to the city of Vallejo, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Afterward, the peninsula puttered along.

While some buildings fell into disrepair, the oldest Naval chapel in the United States still stands, featuring one of the largest collections of Tiffany stained-glass anywhere. There's also a tree-lined, historic corridor of what were once officers' homes-grand, two-story buildings in symmetrical, columned Georgian-Federal architecture.

Alden Park is quintessential Mare Island: An open space with a white gazebo, but there's also a 28-foot-tall ballistic missile shell representing those carried by Cold War-era nuclear-powered submarines. The park is named after Navy commander James Alden, who started a tradition of bringing trees back from overseas excursions in the 1860s, creating a collection of dozens of species, including elm, eucalyptus, almond, olive, apricot, bunyabunya and locust trees, among others.