My second ever recording of Urbex that I completed was done over in the East bay. It was an area I drove by at least once a quarter, and I always wondered what it was. After a bit of poking around, I managed to actually gain access legitimately to the point a guard unlocked buildings for me.
That was a new experience.
Anyways, this location is on the national historic register and is still under remediation. While I work with radiation on a daily basis, this skewed things a bit and the largest concern here was petroleum pollution and contamination, so I wore my mask in quite a few locations.
A lot of these images are HDR shots due to the horrible lighting inside the buildings, and the fact I don't carry much more than a high power flashlight with me.
1. Looking outside of the main building. This was the world's largest winery from 1907-1919, but later became a Naval Fuel depot. It's amusing to consider giant fuel tanks where vats of wine once stood. It's also amusing to think of a US Naval Facility with artistic crenelations around the main storage building.
2. The main Administration building had beautiful ivy covering it.
3. The inside of the administration building looked like it was right out of the 70's. In addition, I felt like I was playing the 70's levels of portal II. Weird sense of deja vu. That cabinet to the right and the doorway beyond were both locked and contained reams of blueprints for what looked like vessels and facilities.
4. This is outside of the prior image. That admin building was built INSIDE of one of the warehouses, on the top floor. The whole building was built on a slope, with the rear (facing the bay) access for trucks and the front for everyone else.
5. The ceilings were in bad shape.
6. Collapsing ceilings were a recurring theme.
7. One of the many inoperable elevators.
8. This was neat. In the back of the admin building there was a huge round hatch in the floor that was used to move casks, and later barrels of oil around from the lower delivery area to the upper storage area.
9. A delivery ramp.
10. This was REALLY neat. In the basement they had an old civil defense shelter from the 50's that was supposed to be an attack/fallout shelter. They have kept it preserved to the point that the old canvas "room" separators are still there, along with metal cans of water. to the right of the entrance was a small ramp that was used to roll barrels down into the basement. This was almost pitch black and the exposure time was 1 or 2 seconds (I can't see the exif right now). It came out really neat, I think.
11. The highest point in the winehaven complex. There used to be brewing tanks here apparently, and then there were fuel storage tanks.
12. An old fuel tank along the shoreline. You can see this from google earth.
13. One of the remaining sets of fuel tanks that are out on the bay side of the hill.
14. This was the pump "maze" out near the fueling pier. A lot of the pipes were air gapped so there was no way they could be used, but I think this was one of the major places they routed fuel around. If I remember correctly, purple was generally used for jet fuel. Not sure about yellow.
15. A shot of the pier from near the "marina" office as they called it.
16. This is the housing across the street that was built for the sailors that manned the place. They were pretty nice houses, but all of them had a horrible amount of asbestos.
17. What remains of one of two playgrounds in that area.
18. A random tire swing near the houses.
19. Inside one of the (two) main pump houses. I nearly fell through a rotting board here, which might have been bad. Looking down the stairs, I thought this was full of clear blue water, but it was just a plastic covering of a skylight that colored the light. It was pretty surreal. Apparently this flooded a lot, as the pipes were covered in mud.
20. Another angle inside the pump house.
21. Looking from right next to the CO's house up on a hill. He had an amazing view of the bay.
I have more images I will put later in the thread, as I pull them off the storage drive. I hope you enjoy this; it's a historic place that had a lot to do with the War and the battle for the pacific. Not to mention, it's a piece of land that somehow managed to avoid the frenzied development of the east bay until it was finally placed on the historic register. The Navy and EPA are still cleaning it up due to the amount of petrol products in the soil. Recently, there has been a lot of earth work behind the building that removed the old retention ponds and flattened the ground.