"Casablanca"-class carriers were built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company's Vancouver Yard on the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. The Vancouver yard was expressly built in 1942 to construct Liberty ships, but exigencies of war soon saw the yard building LST landing craft and then escort carriers all before the end of the yard's first year in operation. The yard had twelve building ways and a outfitting dock along with a unique additional building slip originally intended to add prefabricated superstructures to Liberty ships. Their relatively small size and mass-production origins led their crews to refer to them as "jeep carriers" or "Kaiser Jeeps" with varying degrees of affection.