Winehaven/Point Molate Naval Fuel Depot

Point Molate is located on San Pablo Bay (attached to and just north of San Francisco Bay) and within the relatively densely populated San Francisco Bay Area – but it seems almost no one knows about this area.

A large winery called Winehaven was built here in the early 1900s and after the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 it become the "world's largest winery". The buildings in the opening view were the storage cellar of the winery and have a castle-like appearance. Winehaven even had a post office and a permanent population. When prohibition came around Winehaven became a ghost town.

In the early 1940s the military built many facilities along the waters of the Bay Area. Point Molate became a Naval Fuel Depot. It was finally decommissioned in the 1990s.

Now it sits unoccupied except for a security guard. A visitor might see a of couple people fishing along the shore or driving the road to the small marina around the point or visiting the nearby bed-and-breakfast in the lighthouse on an island off the point – off to the right. But in the busy San Francisco Bay Area, it's interesting to find a place so close and yet so far away.

USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 37° 57' 17.61" N
Long: 123° 26' 16.83" W

Elevation: 10 ft

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Hardware: Nikon D300, Nikkor 10.5mm Lens, 360Precision
Software: PTGui/Mac, Photoshop CS3, PanoPreviewer