Pier 26 (San Francisco, California)

By the middle of the 19th century, the cove and much of the rest of the San Francisco Waterfront was little more than a crumbling mass of abandoned ships and piers.

Many of the people who traveled to California to find fame and fortune in the gold rush simply abandoned their boats on the waterfront.

In 1863, The Board of State Harbor Commissioners commissioned a sea wall to extend around San Francisco's bay shore, which exists today as the Embarcadero.

Although the strike was perceived by many to be a failure, it helped secure a critical pay raise for the longshoremen during the darkest days of the Great Depression.

With the outbreak of the war, San Francisco's waterfront became a military logistics center; troops, equipment and supplies left the Port in support of the Pacific theater.