Beginning with the building of a waterfront boardwalk and marina in 1992, Bremerton had begun the process of revitalizing its downtown community. That same year, the Bremerton Historic Ships Association opened the destroyer to public tours at the end of the boardwalk; the ship was built in the Puget Sound area in 1958, commissioned in 1959, and had played a back-up role in the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that further escalated U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War with the Congressional passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, allowing President Lyndon B. Johnson to send fighting troops in addition to the "advisors" already on the ground in Vietnam.