History of Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida

Naval Station Mayport is the Navy base at the mouth of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, commissioned in December 1942 and now, in the Navy's words, the third largest fleet concentration area in the United States.

The Navy Region Southeast page for the station describes a busy harbor capable of accommodating 34 ships and an 8,000-foot runway capable of handling any aircraft in the Department of Defense inventory, a combination it calls unique. The same page says Mayport is home to more than 80 supported commands, including 20 naval ships and three helicopter squadrons, on 3,409 acres.

The Navy's wording varies from page to page. The About page calls Mayport both the third largest fleet concentration area in the United States and the third largest Navy fleet concentration in the continental United States, while the station history calls it the third largest naval facility in the continental United States.

The Mayport site has a recorded history going back to 1562, when French Huguenot Commodore Jean Ribault arrived off what is now Mayport, near the mouth of the St. Johns River, on May 1.

The Navy's station history says Ribault landed first on the north side of the river, now Fort George, and on May 2 crossed to the south side, where his party placed a stone monument on a sand hill near the river mouth, plainly visible from the sea. The National Park Service adds that Ribault, hand picked by Admiral Coligny to explore Florida, chose the location for the Fort de la Caroline settlement in 1562 and brought reinforcements in 1565. After the Spanish took the French colony at Fort Caroline on St. Johns Bluff, Pedro de Menendez set up small military outposts, one of them on the present site of Naval Station Mayport. A French expedition under De Gourgues seized the Spanish blockhouse at Mayport in 1568, and in 1586 an English fleet under Sir Francis Drake tried to land there after attacking St. Augustine but was turned back by high winds. Old maps, the Navy says, show continuous occupation of the station site by Native Americans, Spanish, English and Americans since the 16th century.

Later centuries were quieter. During the Revolutionary War period many Spanish citizens moved into the Mayport area from the New Smyrna colony, and the history says many of their descendants still live in Mayport, next to the station. At the start of the Civil War the Jacksonville Light Infantry set up a Confederate fort on the present station and named it Fort Steele after its commander; the fort was considered indefensible, so its guns were buried, and they were dug up near the present pilothouse years before the Navy came. In the late 19th century the site was a fashionable resort, with summer cottages for Jacksonville visitors on a wooded shore of the south channel before the jetties were built.

Ribault Bay was chosen in December 1939 as the site of an aircraft carrier basin, on a report by Commander Carl Cotter, the officer in charge of construction.

The Navy history traces the choice to the Hepburn Act of May 17, 1938. A board appointed under that law to investigate a southeastern naval air base recommended to Congress on December 27, 1938 a major base at Jacksonville, including facilities for two carrier groups and berthing for carriers at the inner end of the entrance jetty. The citizens of Duval County promised to buy the land for the main naval air base and the carrier berthing site, and on July 18, 1939 they passed a $1,100,000 bond issue to purchase land for the two stations.

The first Mayport basin was modest. The Navy Department began planning a carrier basin along the south jetties in April 1939, and the basin was dredged to 29 feet and used during World War II by patrol craft, target and rescue boats and jeep carriers. At war's end, $780,000 had been appropriated for a carrier pier on the north side of the basin, but the money was cancelled along with many other appropriations and nothing was built.

Mayport was commissioned as a U.S. Naval Section Base in December 1942, put in caretaker status after the war, and reactivated in June 1948.

The station history says the section base grew out of a proposal by the commanding officer of Section Base One at the Naval Reserve Armory for a second section base at Mayport. On April 1, 1944, the Mayport air facility was commissioned a Naval Auxiliary Air Station under the same officer, and the next year the air station took over the entire site, including the pier and docks.

Peace nearly emptied the base. Both the Mayport section base and the air station were decommissioned and placed in caretaker status, and the Coast Guard ran a small boot camp there for several years before leaving in late 1947 because of budget cuts. In June 1948 Mayport was reactivated as a Naval Outlying Landing Field under the commanding officer of NAS Jacksonville. Three years later its land area had grown to 1,680 acres and work had begun on extending the runway.

Mayport became a carrier base on October 29, 1952, when USS Tarawa entered Ribault Bay as the first capital ship to use the new carrier basin, according to the Navy history.

Mayport was still a landing field under NAS Jacksonville then, and it borrowed tugboats from Naval Station Green Cove Springs to service Tarawa. In 1953 the Corps of Engineers received $350,000 to re-dredge the basin to 40 plus two feet so Midway class carriers could enter, and the first of them was USS Coral Sea in 1954. By 1955 Mayport represented an investment of nearly $10 million, with an 8,000-foot master jet runway and a 4,200-foot runway, and on July 1, 1955 it became a Naval Auxiliary Air Station once again, with an allowance of eight officers, 230 enlisted personnel and 101 civilians.

Command and families followed the ships to Mayport. In April 1955 the commander of Carrier Division Two moved his headquarters to Mayport, the first time such a headquarters was based ashore in Jacksonville. In 1956 USS Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived from Bremerton, Washington, to make Mayport its new homeport, and the history says it was the first time Navy families moved to Jacksonville with the ship.

During the Cold War Mayport received the first official missile mail, sent ships to space recoveries and served as a staging area in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Navy history records.

Shortly before noon on June 8, 1959, a Regulus I missile launched from the submarine USS Barbero landed at Mayport 22 minutes later carrying about 3,000 pieces of mail, which Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield called the first known official use of missiles by any post office department. On February 23, 1962, the Mayport based USS Noa was a recovery ship for John Glenn's Friendship Seven capsule, and on June 11, 1965 the carrier USS Wasp brought the Gemini 4 astronauts and capsule to Mayport. From October 21 to November 22, 1962, the Second Marine Division set up an advanced staging area on the station during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The later Cold War years brought presidents and losses. In February 1973 President and Mrs. Richard Nixon visited Mayport, where the President credited the 4,500 men of the carrier Saratoga after their 10-month deployment. Mayport ships served off Beirut in 1982 and 1983, and three ships and Destroyer Squadron 24 took part in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983. On May 17, 1987, the Mayport based frigate USS Stark was struck by two Iraqi missiles in the Persian Gulf and 37 crewmen died; President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan attended the memorial service at Mayport five days later. As helicopter aviation grew, Mayport became the East Coast home of the LAMPS MK III community, and the Mayport air facility was re-designated a naval air station in 1988.

Since 1990 Mayport ships have deployed to the Gulf War and later operations, and the station has kept modernizing its piers, housing and gates, according to the Navy history.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Mayport units in the USS Saratoga battle group deployed for several months; the battle group returned to Mayport in late March 1991, and the last Mayport unit came home in early July. In December 1998 USS Gettysburg took part in Operation Desert Fox, and in March 1999 USS Philippine Sea was the first unit to launch Tomahawk missiles in Operation Allied Force. In 2000 the main gate was moved again, the base golf course was rehabilitated, a single sailor center opened, and the destroyer USS Roosevelt brought the Roosevelt name back to Mayport.

The station home page, checked October 18, 2026, showed its most recent news item as USS The Sullivans returning to Mayport on February 3, 2024 from a two-month deployment to the U.S. Naval Forces Europe area, so the page is a dated record rather than a current news feed. An earlier item from February 14, 2023 reported Mayport being named one of CNIC's top installations.

Mayport is one piece of a larger military economy. The City of Jacksonville Office of Economic Development, citing the January 2024 Florida Military and Defense Economic Impact Summary, lists these Duval County figures for all installations combined:

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Navy Region Southeast history, about and home pages for Naval Station Mayport and the City of Jacksonville military presence page.