Way out in the San Pablo Bay is a small harbor that’s home to a restaurant and music venue whimsically called the Sailing Goat. To get here you drive and drive, first through a desolate stretch of abandoned buildings fenced off with barbed wire then continuing along a windy, narrow tree-lined road until you start questioning if you’re going the right way. When your phone drops all connection, you have just a few more twists and turns to go.
It’s disorienting out here, after so many turns I’ve lost my bearings and there are no easy landmarks to spot from this little finger of land. But the adventure is worth it to sit outside on a nice evening with a view of the water and the adorable houseboats. Bonus if there’s a good band! I just make sure to hit the road home while there’s still light to drive by.
And those abandoned buildings? Y’all know I can’t sit with an unanswered question for very long, and now that I’ve passed through here a couple of times the itch had to be scratched. Turns out the most interesting building — an imposing brick castle — was Winehaven, built by the California Wine Association in 1907 as an international wine shipping hub and ‘world’s largest winery’ until Prohibition put it out of business. There’s also a stretch of what I assumed was decommissioned base housing, knowing this area was once home to a Naval fuel depot. And that’s correct, but it’s not the whole story. All of these things were one and the same! Those homes were built as part of Winehaven, housing as many as 400 of its employees in season. Later, the whole winery site was converted into the fuel depot and barracks during WWII. Today it’s 400 acres of ghost town on the bay.
