The history of Mare Island, located on the western edge of Vallejo, can be traced back to Spanish General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who originally received the land as a reward for his successful defeat of the indigenous Indian tribes. General Vallejo was an avid horseman, and on one occasion the barge carrying a new shipment of his horses capsized on its way to the city. Some of the horses were able to swim ashore and many weeks later a white mare, a favorite of the General’s, was found grazing on the hillside of an island across the channel from Vallejo. The island was thereby named “Mare’s Island,” which was eventually shortened to Mare Island.
In the early 1850s President Fillmore designated the island a government reservation and it soon became the Pacific Coast’s greatest U.S. Naval Shipyard and operated until 1996. The original dry dock, which is depicted in this mosaic, was built in New York, knocked down, and reassembled at the shipyard. Earl Barnett, the artist, depicts the clipper ship “USS Independence” tied up at the newly completed dock while a festive crowd of soldiers, civilians, and sailors looks on.
Earl Barnett, a resident of Sacramento, executed this mosaic under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a federal program that originated as a relief project for unemployed artists during the Depression and operated from December 1933 to June 1934. Barnett stated that he was not interested in executing a work with political or labor related subject matter, as was typical of WPA murals at that time. Instead he chose a historical subject that had resonance for the city of Vallejo.
