[4] 200 acres (81 ha) of land were acquired for a shipyard in August 1917,[5] and Shaw-Batcher was awarded a $30 million contract to build 18 merchant ships during World War I.

The worksite population grew from 200 in early 1917 to 4,447 by July 1918, a month after the company's first ship was launched.

[6] After the war, Western Pipe moved shipbuilding operations to San Pedro[7][8] and continued to produce pipe in South San Francisco, which was used in notable dam projects such as Hetch Hetchy, Grand Coulee, Shasta, and Folsom.

[9] The shipyard was reactivated in 1939 for World War II,[10][11] and after the war ended, the site was sold in 1948 to Consolidated Steel (later United States Steel and its divisions),[12] which closed the mill in 1983.

In 1958, for example, only four of the 27 total northbound weekday commuter trains stopped at the station.