The base carries the name of First Lieutenant Lloyd Andrews Hamilton, who led a low-level bombing attack on a German airdrome at Varsenare, Belgium, thirty miles behind enemy lines on August 13, 1918. He earned the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism. Thirteen days later, Hamilton died in action near Lagnicourt, France. The airfield that would bear his name began as a scrubby patch of Marin County coastline known informally as Marin Meadows. Construction started on July 1, 1932, designed to house four bomb squadrons. When Brigadier General Henry "Hap" Arnold accepted the completed installation on May 12, 1935, from Governor Frank Merriam of California, the base looked like nothing else in the American military -- a Spanish Revival campus of reinforced concrete walls under stucco, mission tile roofs capping barracks and hospitals alike. Captain Nurse had departed from every convention of military architecture, and the result was beautiful.

Hamilton's most dramatic chapter unfolded before anyone on base knew it was starting. On December 6, 1941, four B-17Cs and two new B-17Es of the 38th Reconnaissance Squadron left Hamilton bound for Hickam Field, Hawaii, en route to the Philippines to reinforce the Far East Air Force. None carried ammunition. After flying through the night, the unarmed bombers arrived over Oahu on the morning of December 7 -- directly into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Radar operators mistook the incoming American flight for the Japanese strike force. Two planes landed at a short fighter strip at Haleiwa, one made a belly-landing at Bellows, one set down on the Kahuku Golf Course, and the rest reached Hickam under strafing fire. The timing was almost impossibly unlucky. Back at Hamilton, the remaining B-17Es of the 7th Bombardment Group were immediately ordered south to Muroc, and the base pivoted overnight from peacetime routine to wartime urgency.

After the war, Hamilton became the nerve center for defending the Pacific Coast from Soviet air attack. The Western Air Defense Force established headquarters there in 1949, and over the next two decades, the base cycled through nearly every interceptor in the American arsenal. P-61 Black Widows gave way to F-82 Twin Mustangs, then F-86D Sabres, then -- briefly and unhappily -- the F-104A Starfighter, whose low range and lack of all-weather capability made it a poor fit for the interceptor mission. In October 1958, twelve of Hamilton's F-104As were crated and airlifted to Taiwan during the Quemoy crisis, serving temporarily with the Republic of China Air Force before returning stateside. The F-101B Voodoo finally proved adequate, and the F-106A Delta Dart, which arrived in 1968, was considered by many the finest all-weather interceptor ever built. The 84th Fighter Interceptor Squadron flew F-106s from Hamilton for nearly twenty years. Meanwhile, the Western NORAD Region headquarters operated from the base, coordinating the aerospace defense of eleven western states and two Canadian provinces.

Hamilton closed in stages. The active Air Force departed after 1973, the reserves followed in 1976, and the Army held the last parcels until 1988. But between the military leaving and the developers arriving, something unexpected happened. From 1980 to 1983, the former Air Force barracks became a Refugee Transit Center operated by the International Organization for Migration. As many as 180,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Afghanistan passed through Hamilton, sleeping one night in the same quarters where airmen had once bunked before heading to war in the Pacific. The symmetry was unintentional but unmistakable: a base built to project American power became, for a few years, a place where the human consequences of that power came home.

Today, seven of the nine original hangars have been converted to offices, their facades preserved while the interiors were renovated. The development is called Hamilton Landing. The former headquarters, three large barracks, and the firehouse have been restored, while the War Department Theatre, the hospital, and the Officers' Club await their fates. MythBusters filmed experiments in the hangar space. Scenes from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Right Stuff were shot here. A tidal wetland restoration project led by the Army Corps of Engineers and the California Coastal Conservancy is reclaiming the former runway areas. Captain Nurse's Spanish Revival buildings, which the Historic American Buildings Survey documented in 1993 and 1994, remain the base's most distinctive legacy -- military buildings so handsome that the community fought to keep them standing long after the mission they served had ended.