At the turn of the twentieth century, Point Judith's Port of Galilee was a small cluster of fishing shacks where a handful of fishermen lived year round, collected rainwater, gathered by the stove on cold nights, kept their boats moored near shore, and fished in both the pond and the ocean. The fleet remained small because the natural breachway connecting pond to sea was shallow and unreliable; winter storms often filled it in, fishermen had to dredge it by hand, and it could not accommodate deep-draft vessels, so catches had to be hauled to Newport or carted to the railroad station for shipment to New York markets. A breakwater built outside the pond by the Army Corp of Engineers, completed between 1906 and 1915, used almost one and a half million tons of stone and created a Harbor of Refuge where large vessels could anchor, becoming the first in a series of improvements that transformed Galilee into a major fishing port. A permanent breachway completed in 1910 marked a second turning point, and between 1895 and 1935 catches increased by 23% per year. Another major change came in 1935, when a Works Progress Administration program dredged a 35-acre area just inside the pond, built a state pier, and paved a road to Galilee. Between 1935 and 1945, the creation of a stable boat dockage platform enabled fish catches to climb by 47% per year. In the 1920s and 1930s, fisherman Tom Mann, known as the "mayor" of Galilee, gave the port its biblical name as a joke, and the name remained.