How Battleship IOWA, the National Museum of the Surface Navy, and LA Fleet Week helped bring visitors to San Pedro's LA Waterfront.
When Battleship IOWA arrived in San Pedro in 2012, she changed the view of the harbor. Her bow rose above Harbor Boulevard, with the working Port of Los Angeles behind her. For the first time, many people who had driven past the port had a reason to stop, walk to the water, and see what was here.
That reason has brought people back for fourteen years. Pacific Battleship Center reports that more than three million people have visited Battleship IOWA since she opened on the LA Waterfront. They have come from Southern California, across the United States, and around the world. Some came for the ship's history. Others came with a school group, to honor a veteran, attend an event, or find out what life aboard a Navy ship was really like. Each visit has introduced people to San Pedro and the waterfront around us.
An anchor for a changing waterfront
The waterfront's story began long before IOWA arrived. Generations of sailors, longshore workers, fishermen, businesses, and families built San Pedro and Wilmington. The Port and the community were planning new public spaces before 2012. What IOWA added was a major attraction people could visit right away and a highly visible reminder that the harbor belongs in Los Angeles's story.
The Port recognized that potential then. Its 2012 report on bringing IOWA to San Pedro described her as a visitor attraction that could contribute to the emerging LA Waterfront and support downtown San Pedro. That expectation became visible to others. In a 2024 Daily Breeze report, Alan Johnson of West Harbor developer Jerico Development described IOWA's arrival as bringing San Pedro a national attraction. The ship became a place to bring family and friends, and a starting point for discovering the Maritime Museum, neighborhood restaurants, harbor memorials, and the working port itself.
Today, the waterfront is growing around that invitation. West Harbor, new public spaces, and attractions throughout San Pedro and Wilmington give visitors more reasons to explore and stay. Next to IOWA is the Freedom of the Seas Park and Pavilion, planned as a place for education, veterans, events, and community gatherings. In August 2026, the Port of Los Angeles committed $4 million toward the project; Urbanize LA also covered the planned building and park. It is another investment in connecting people with the waterfront and with each other.
From a historic battleship to a national museum
IOWA's role has grown along with the waterfront. She is now the home of the National Museum of the Surface Navy, which connects America's story to the sailors and ships that keep the seas open. Our new Life of a Sailor experience invites visitors to do more than look at a ship. They receive an assignment, follow a sailor's story, learn the skills of a crew, and begin to understand the people behind the missions. Explore the museum and Life of a Sailor.
That story reaches far beyond the Navy. From IOWA's deck, visitors can look across the Port of Los Angeles and see the connection for themselves. Together with the neighboring Port of Long Beach, it forms the San Pedro Bay port complex. The Port's 2025 figures rank Los Angeles as the No. 1 container port in the Western Hemisphere and show that the combined complex handles about 31% of U.S. containerized international waterborne trade. That measures goods moving through seaports, not all U.S. trade. Open oceans connect this harbor to the goods in our homes, jobs across the country, and the wider economy. The museum gives that big idea a human face: the sailors whose service helps keep those routes open.
LA Fleet Week took the story beyond the harbor.
In 2016, we helped launch LA Fleet Week with the City and Port of Los Angeles. The idea was simple: bring the public and today's service members together in a city whose harbor has always been vital to the nation. IOWA offered a home and a historic backdrop. Active-duty ships and their crews brought the present-day story to the waterfront.
Fleet Week grew into one of Los Angeles's signature Memorial Day traditions. Families line up to tour active-duty ships. Sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, soldiers, veterans, first responders, and neighbors meet face to face. Downtown San Pedro and Wilmington host welcome events, while activities reach other parts of the Los Angeles region. Reporting by the Daily Breeze, republished in Stars and Stripes, put 2024 attendance at more than 100,000, according to organizers. For its tenth year in 2026, the event included ship tours, more than 90 military and first responder exhibits, demonstrations, and community events across the region.
That Stars and Stripes coverage is one example of Fleet Week reaching a national audience. The Navy's Defense Visual Information Distribution Service also documents the event through stories, images, and video. Together, the event and its coverage give people beyond Los Angeles another view of San Pedro: a waterfront where the public can meet the people serving at sea today.
The next chapter is about people.
The next evolution brings those stories together in a more immersive museum experience and a waterfront gathering place beside the ship. We plan to have the Freedom of the Seas Pavilion ready for use during the 2028 Olympic Games, when sailing events in the waters of the Port of Los Angeles will bring new attention to San Pedro. The pavilion is intended to help welcome that attention with space for visitors, community events, education, and gatherings that will serve the waterfront long after the Games. Its opening remains a project goal as construction and funding progress.
IOWA's impact is visible in the visitors who come aboard, the businesses they discover, the students who see a possible career, and the veterans who find a place where their service is understood. We are proud of the part this ship has played in renewing interest in the LA Waterfront. We are just as proud to be part of a community that keeps building its future.
The battleship first caught people's attention from the road. Now she invites them to step aboard, meet the people behind the ship, and keep exploring the harbor beyond it. That is how a landmark becomes more than a landmark. It becomes a beginning.
Limited time only!
Kids Board Free
In the all-new Life of a Sailor experience, kids become sailor recruits, building their skills, following the story of a famous sailor, and joining Vicky the Dog on a scavenger hunt through Battleship IOWA.
Kids board free with a paid adult.