Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is a base of the United States Navy located adjacent to the city of St. Marys in Camden County, Georgia, on the East River in southeastern Georgia, and from Jacksonville, Florida. The Submarine Base is the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's home port for U.S. Navy Fleet ballistic missile nuclear submarines capable of being armed with Trident missile nuclear weapons. This submarine base covers about of land, of which are protected wetlands. History The early years Archeological research has revealed a pre-Columbian era Indian presence throughout the area, dating back thousands of years. Early in the 19th century, much of what is now the submarine base was the site of several plantations, including Cherry Point, Harmony Hall, New Canaan, Marianna and Kings Bay. Beginning in the 1790s, Thomas King built a plantation along the bay. John Houston McIntosh built a considerably larger plantation known as New Canaan, where he grew cotton and sugar cane. The plantation system declined following the Civil War, and the land was broken up into smaller holdings. No residents were paid the going rate for the land that was used to build the submarine base. One land owner was paid four thousand dollars for 62 acres of deep water land. Such residents harvested shrimp, fish and other seafood, and trapped and hunted to supplement small-scale farming of corn, sugar and other vegetables. The Army years The US Army began to acquire of land at Kings Bay in 1954 to build a military ocean terminal to ship ammunition in case of a national emergency. Construction began in 1955 and was completed in 1958. A 200-foot-wide channel was dredged to Cumberland Sound, and included two turning basins. The most prominent feature of the terminal was its , concrete-and-steel wharf (600 m × 26 m). It had three parallel railroad tracks, enabling the simultaneous loading of several ammunition ships from rail cars and trucks. Elsewhere on the base, the Army laid of railroad tracks. Spurs off the main line ran into temporary storage areas protected by earthen barricades. These mounds of dirt, still prominent features in many areas of the base, were designed to localize damage in case of explosive accidents. It was soon realized that there was no immediate operational need for the installation, so it was placed in an inactive ready status, and Blue Star Shipping Company signed a lease to use the wharf