World War II: The First Big Expansion

Throughout the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Dublin’s total population hovered around 200-250.  People lived on small- or medium-sized farms and only a few lived and worked at the crossroads.  This changed during World War II.  The U.S. Navy, as part of its huge expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area, bought nearly five square miles of land just east of the crossroads.  Between 1942 and 1944, the Navy built three bases which eventually housed about 90,000 sailors and Marines.  Known collectively as Fleet City, they consisted of Camp Parks, Camp Shoemaker, and Shoemaker Naval Hospital.  By the end of the war, over 350,000 personnel had worked, trained, or been housed at the bases.  After the war, the U.S. government closed the bases and began selling the buildings and property.  The first large purchaser was Alameda County, which repurposed the old Navy brig (prison) to become the Santa Rita Jail.

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1. Crossroads of the Bay Area
2. The First Settlers
3. Spanish Explorers, Missionaries, and Mexican Rancheros
4. Gold Rush Adventurers and Early Farmers
5. More Farmers, the Lincoln Highway, and Bootleggers
6. World War II: The First Big Expansion
7. Making Suburbia
8. Local Control, Incorporation, and The New History
9. The Future?