Richmond Shipyards District

The plaque credits the yards with 747 ships during 1941 and 1942; the register it draws on says 1941 to 1945, and two years could not have held them. Kaiser's four yards welded rather than riveted, so Richmond's Rosies were mostly Wendys. The city grew from about 23,000 people to over 100,000, many of the newcomers Black workers recruited from the South, whom most of the yards' unions resisted taking in; those admitted were shunted into auxiliary locals. Red Oak Victory, the last surviving Richmond-built ship, is moored nearby as a museum.

What the plaque says

Richmond Shipyards During the World War II Home Front effort, the Richmond Shipyards were an immense facility covering 880 acres. Constructed for the Henry J. Kaiser Company in 1941 and 1942, these shipyards became the largest in the world. New methods of ship construction developed here, including prefabrication and intense labor specialization, allowed the production of new vessels at a record pace. The shipbuilding techniques used by Henry J. Kaiser at Richmond became a model for shipyards throughout the nation. During the period 1941-1942, the Richmond shipyards built 747 ships, including 519 Liberty ships, which represents almost a quarter of the total U.S. Liberty ship production. Between 1942 and 1943 the Richmond shipyards hired 90,000 workers, many of them women, African Americans from the rural south, and members of other underrepresented groups. The influx of new workers drawn by good wages for unskilled labor reshaped the social and cultural landscape of the Bay Area. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 1032 Plaque placed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, the Port of Richmond, and the Bill Beaver Project, on December 7, 2017

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muir Woods National Monument — 11 mi
  A redwood canyon saved from a reservoir by a gift, and named for a man who had been there once.
• Muir Beach Overlook — 12 mi
  A cliff edge on Highway 1, and the concrete dugouts where two-man crews watched the sea after Pearl Harbor.
• Earthquake Trail — 25 mi
  A short loop along the San Andreas, where a broken fence shows how far Point Reyes moved in under a minute in 1906.
• Kule Loklo — 25 mi
  A Coast Miwok village built in the 1970s to honour a people its builders were told had died out. They had not.

More markers nearby

• Alvarado Adobe — 3.5 mi
• Castro Home — 3.9 mi
• Angel Island — 4.8 mi
• East Brother Light Station — 4.9 mi