On November 16, 1941, Morro Bay held a dedication with a parade, a flag-raising, short talks by officials, and a concert by the 40th Division's 270-piece band. Someone unveiled a dedicatory stone. Someone else cut a ribbon, and that started a dredger working on the estuary.
That dredger did more than anything else at the ceremony. The Navy section base it started digging was decommissioned more than 80 years ago, and nearly all of its buildings have been removed, sold off or turned over to other uses. The ground those buildings stood on is still here, along with the piers they served. Today that ground is the Embarcadero. The base you might expect to find in a museum case is still in daily use, and its main structure is the waterfront where the town buys fish, ties up boats and walks the dog.
A harbor the war paid for
Before 1941, people had talked about building a working harbor in Morro Bay, but the money never came. Planners had pictured the bay in a Pacific war for years. A Telegraph Tribune article from September 21, 1935 called San Luis Obispo County a future "center of defense activity," and the next year's national war games included an amphibious mock invasion of Morro Bay.
War brought the urgency and the funding. The Historical Society of Morro Bay reports that the Navy condemned 108 parcels in August 1941 and dedicated a $2.5 million section base that November. Its first job was to shelter and service coastal patrol craft, and the Coast Guard ran beach patrols from it.
The base got much bigger in 1944. Congress authorized funds for an Amphibious Training Base on March 29, 1944, and the Army Corps of Engineers began building it on the waterfront. In the Historical Society's account of who owns the Embarcadero, the Corps dredged fill out of the shallow estuary, which deepened the harbor, and used it to build flat land behind revetments. Those revetments "trace perfect lines along the natural waterfront almost from Morro Rock to the south end of where Tidelands Park is today." The main base buildings went where the power plant stands now, and the work included the T-piers and the other harbor pieces the town still uses.
The training was short and intense. In about a year and a half, the base trained more than 45,000 men in amphibious landings on Morro Bay and the beaches around it. Event organizers describe them as troops preparing for D-Day and for the Pacific island invasions. The base was decommissioned on October 31, 1945.
Which parts of the waterfront date to the base
The harbor's major pieces come from several different periods, and the dates can be surprising. The breakwater that ties Morro Rock to the shore went up before the Navy arrived. The South T-Pier you walk on today is younger than many of the people walking on it.
| Harbor feature | Origin | Status today |
|---|---|---|
| North breakwater, Morro Rock to shore | WPA project completed in 1936, before the base | In place |
| South breakwater | Built in 1942 | Repaired and rebuilt since |
| Embarcadero revetments and fill | Navy-funded, built 1942–43 and extended for the training base in 1944 | The ground under today's Embarcadero |
| North and South T-Piers | Part of the wartime harbor project | South T-Pier burned December 1, 1988 and was rebuilt in 1993 |
| Main base buildings | Stood where the power plant is now | Gone |
The town didn't move in all at once. The Historical Society describes the early postwar Embarcadero as mostly empty, because the long-established abalone fleet didn't use most of what the Navy left behind. Over time, fishing boats came up from San Pedro and down from San Francisco to work the lightly fished waters offshore. The original Harbor Hut opened in the late 1940s to serve fishermen and returning tourists. For a while the old base site was a race track. The fishing harbor came about because there was empty Navy infrastructure sitting on the water.
The buildings that were trucked away
Most of the base was built so it could be taken apart. According to a 2026 Historical Society history of the town's Quonset huts, somewhere between 65 and 100 huts went up, mostly along the waterfront where the power plant is now. They served as sleeping quarters and training space. After the war, the War Assets Administration sold them to veterans and later to civilians, and many became postwar housing or community buildings.
The Historical Society says a few remain, and it names three, each with a different second life.
- The Q Inn, 1141 Main Street. In fall 1947, the 4-H Club of Morro Bay raised the money to buy a surplus hut from the school district and made it into a clubroom. It later housed an antique mall. Owners John and Joan Solu restored the 4,000-square-foot building as The Q Inn, a 10-room boutique hotel that leaves the original steel trusses and arches exposed inside. KSBY reported in April 2026 that the building had opened to hotel guests.
- The southern Embarcadero hut. It sits across a parking lot from The Shell Shop. It has stored bags of dog food and served as a school bus barn back when Morro Bay had no high school of its own. The Shell Shop now uses it to store merchandise.
- The North Main hut. This is the one with the art deco façade, a little south of Highway 41, most recently used for antique and secondhand retail.
So the base is easier to find in odd places than on any official site. Its land is under the Embarcadero, and a few of its buildings ended up as a hotel, a storage shed and a shop.
The boat that saw the war arrive
The base was being dedicated during the same weeks the war showed up off this coast. On December 23, 1941, a Japanese submarine chased the Richfield Oil ship Larry Doheny just off Morro Bay and fired two torpedoes that missed. One exploded early, and the shock broke the doors on the ship's wheelhouse. A second submarine sank the Union Oil tanker Montebello near San Simeon and fired on the crew as they got into the lifeboats. All 36 crew members were rescued uninjured, and the Standard Oil tugboat Alma picked up 22 of them.
The Alma is on permanent display at the Morro Bay Maritime Museum, 1210 Embarcadero. The museum lists free admission and hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week, but that schedule was posted in 2025, so call before you go. The tug stands on Navy-funded fill, a few blocks from where it helped bring in survivors of one of the first attacks on this coast.
Two November dates for the 85th anniversary
The Central California Coast Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America is marking the anniversary with two events. One is this Saturday, and the other falls on the anniversary itself.
- Sock Hop and Living History Fair, Saturday, November 7, 1 to 4 p.m. It's free, at the Morro Bay Veterans Memorial Building, 209 Surf Street, co-organized with the Rising Phoenix Community Organization. The event listing includes reenactors in 1941–45 clothing, historic military vehicles outside, a swing set by the Riptide Big Band, live dance performances, and exhibits from local museums and historical societies. You're welcome to come in 1940s clothes. The Historical Society has set its 85th-anniversary commemoration for 3 p.m. that afternoon. Participating groups include California State Parks, the Cal Poly Swing Dance Club, the Cayucos Historical Society, Central Coast Convoy, the Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum, Friends of the Morro Bay Harbor Department, the Historical Society of Morro Bay, the South County Historical Society and the US Coast Guard Auxiliary.
- A screening of Steven Spielberg's 1941, Monday, November 16, at the Bay Theatre, 464 Morro Bay Blvd. The date is 85 years to the day after the dedication. VIP tickets cost $25 and include early admission at 4:30 p.m. with a wine and cheese social. General admission is $15, with doors at 5 p.m. and the movie at 5:30. The 1979 comedy pokes fun at the real panic in Southern California after Pearl Harbor. Ticket sales support the local MOAA chapter and the participating nonprofits.
If you want the full story before Saturday, the Historical Society's fall series in Estero Bay News covers it in three parts: "Building Toward World War II" on September 24, "1941: The War Comes to the Central Coast" on October 8, and "War brings a harbor to Morro Bay" on October 22. To see the base itself, a short walk is enough. Start at the Maritime Museum, head south along the revetment line toward Tidelands Park, and stop by the Quonset hut across from The Shell Shop.
At Jordan Jackson, we read Morro Bay's waterfront the way the Historical Society tells it: as ground the Navy paid for and the town has been finding uses for ever since. If you own property near the Embarcadero or on Main Street and want to talk about what that history means for its value or its potential, Book a Consultation.
