Hamilton AFB main gate (#0012)

Main gate to the former Hamilton Air Force Base. Based on a picture in the museum link below, the gate appears to be largely as it was in the 1940’s along the top and ends, but the road entrance is changed and the checkpoints have been removed.

Hamilton AFB, in Novato, CA, started out as a civilian air field in the late 1920’s but fairly quickly became a military airfield. It’s name changed many times over the years (the U.S. Air Force wasn’t created until 1947), as did its mission (see Wikipedia link). It was closed as a military airfield in the mid-1970’s but continued as military housing; in the early 1980’s the barracks and other buildings wre used as a transition center for 180,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In 1995 it was sold for redevelopment and the remaining military who lived there moved, except for a small Coast Guard base that remains. The base is now a mix of historic buildings and new housing developments.

One thing that stands out for the remaining structures is that very many of them were built in the 1930’s and are examples of the New Deal projects of that era.

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Army_Airfield
Museum link: www.militarymuseum.org/HamiltonAFB.html