San Diego History

Every story we have written, in one list.

Newest work and strongest stories first. Each one is sourced to a public record and cited at the bottom of its page.

By Bryen Beglinger · Market Journal IQ

The Downtown WaterfrontThere was a Japanese neighborhood built out over the water, and in 1942 it was emptied in six days.La JollaA woman spent ten years building a pool so children could swim safely. The seals have it now.Bankers Hill and UptownSan Diego had cable cars, and the men who built them were running the bank that killed them.National CityThe Pacific end of the Santa Fe was National City, and they got it by moving a piece of track in the night.Del MarThe road is named for a man who never owned a share of the place.Coronado and North IslandNorth Island was an island, and the Navy filled the channel with the bay.Solana BeachThe gap in the bluff at Solana Beach was cut with a fire hose.Palomar MountainSan Diego County built a road around the turning radius of one piece of glass.Rancho Santa FeA railroad planted a forest here for lumber. It got Rancho Santa Fe instead.JulianThe building called the Julian Hotel is not the Julian Hotel.Ocean BeachThere was a fifty foot wooden bridge from Ocean Beach to Mission Beach.Oceanside and the San Luis Rey ValleyThe oldest pepper tree in California came off a ship.Sherman Heights and Golden HillA San Diego neighborhood cost eighty dollars.Campo and the Mountain EmpireThe Army put its last cavalry post at Campo, and the county record says why.Middletown and UptownA San Diego neighborhood was platted in 1850 and nobody built on it for seventy years.

Every photograph we have gathered, including the whole of Picturesque San Diego, 1887, is in the photo gallery. Each story is sourced and cited. The county fact collection, with more that has not been written up yet, is at San Diego history.