On November 6, 1850, two months after California was admitted to statehood, President Millard Fillmore reserved Mare Island for government use. The United States Navy Department acted favorably on Commodore Sloat's recommendations, and Mare Island was purchased in July 1852, for the sum of $83,410, for the use as a naval shipyard. Two years later, on September 16, 1854, Mare Island became the first permanent United States naval installation on the West Coast, with Commodore David G. Farragut as Mare Island's first base commander. For more than a century, Mare Island served as the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. A drydock was built by the Public Works Department on an excellent rock foundation of cut granite blocks. The work took nineteen years and was completed in 1891. During the Spanish–American War, a concrete drydock on wooden piles, long, was completed after eleven years of work, in 1910. By 1941, a third drydock had been completed, and drydock number four was under construction. The ammunitions depot and submarine repair base were modern, fireproof buildings. A million-dollar, three-way vehicle causeway to Vallejo was completed.