Mare Island Historic Park Foundation

Wonderful tour led by Jim. History + nature! A great morning spent on the island. For people who are looking to visit the Naval Museum on the island, it is no longer open, but this tour is operative and you get to see the naval chapel and walk around the area. I was originally looking for information about the museum and arrived at this page: https://www.mihpf.org/tours. I hope this will help you find their tour options and dates! All digitalized, no fuss. And it turns out I was the only who signed up for today's tour, and they did not cancel on me because of that. I really really appreciated it. One last thing, the money you spend on the tour goes into helping this foundation : ) Yay!

I have lived on Mare Island for 15 years and am still learning something new every time I go to one of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation's tours, attend one of their events, or stop by their library.They used to run a museum on the Island before that got closed due to seismic issues. BUT, they claim the entire Island is a "museum", and they are right!They provide great tours that start at the Tiffany stained-glass windows of the incredibly-cute St. Peter's Chapel (built 1901) and continue on for a historic walk-about of the Island including the sail of the USS Vallejo, Alden Park with its trees and missiles and artifacts, and the historic core were the ships used to be built. Takes about 90 minutes. The docents know their stuff, and many have worked on Mare Island and so provide first-hand knowledge.The Foundation also maintains a small but packed library, which is a great for a deeper dive after you tour (or if you are doing some research, or simply want to immerse yourself in their many-thousands of photographs and clippings).They rent out St. Peters Chapel for weddings, and the Admiral's Mansion gardens for private events. And they do numerous events throughout the year including bringing in some really cool speakers to elaborate on colorful and critical pieces of Mare Island History. They also host a fun "Founders Day" event in September.This is an awesome and impactful non-profit stewarding some incredible history.

We just took the 90 minute Mare Island chapel and historic walking tour of this former naval base that was founded in 1854. The tour was fascinating and very informative. I would highly recommend taking this tour, especially if you like history, Tiffany stained glass windows, beautiful officers homes and much more. Ken gave us interesting insights and shared his great depth of knowledge about Mare Island.

Jim, our tour guide, gave us a diverse and most interesting tour starting with St. Peter's Chapel and all its' beautiful windows, most of them Tiffany. We then walked the short distance from the Chapel to the shipyard by way of the lovely homes (not open for touring) that used to be inhabited by the high-ranking officers and their families, spent some time viewing artifacts in the park and getting some of the history of the surrounding buildings and then came to the cherry on top...the shipyard. The dry dock, which took two decades to "dig" and construct, was amazing. Jim was very personable and his presentation kept our interest throughout the entire tour...just the right amount of humor and always appropriate. Very lovely afternoon and a most appreciated birthday gift for my husband. Our only suggestion would be to have more in depth information on the shipyard's WWII history. Perhaps that could be a separate tour.