Morro Bay Maritime Museum preserves the seafaring history of Morro Bay and California’s central coast through free exhibits supported largely by donations and shop sales. Emerging from Brent Roberts’s early-1990s effort to organize maritime history enthusiasts, the association became a nonprofit in 1995 and worked with city leaders to establish a site in Morro Bay. Even before the building fully opened, it brought visiting historic ships into the harbor. Its collections include major outdoor vessels and indoor exhibits on local military history, abalone harvesting, and mooring buoys. The interior opened on September 29, 2018, and the museum later weathered pandemic closures partly through its outdoor displays.