Los Angeles & Southern California - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [233]
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FAST FACTS
Population San Diego County 2.94 million
Population city of San Diego 1.26 million
Average temps Jan 45/65°F, July 63/75°F
Downtown San Diego to La Jolla 13 miles
Downtown San Diego to Tijuana 18 miles
San Diego to Julian 62 miles
San Diego to Disneyland 94 miles
San Diego to LA 120 miles
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HISTORY
Evidence of human habitation in the region goes back to at least 18,000 BC, in the form of middens (ancient refuse heaps). When Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo became the first European to sail into San Diego Bay in 1542, the region was divided peaceably between the native Kumeyaay and Luiseño/Juaneño peoples. Their way of life continued undisturbed until Junípero Serra and Gaspar de Portolá arrived in 1769. They founded the first permanent European settlement in California – a mission and fort on the hill now known as the Presidio.
When the United States took California from Mexico in the 1840s, San Diego was little more than a ramshackle village. But San Francisco property speculator William Heath Davis saw a fortune to be made. In the 1850s he bought 160 acres of bay-front property and erected homes, a wharf and warehouses. ‘Davis’ Folly’ eventually went bust, but just a decade later, another San Francisco speculator, Alonzo E Horton, acquired 960 acres of waterfront land and promoted it as ‘New Town.’ This time the idea stuck.
Gold was discovered in the hills east of San Diego in 1869, and the ensuing rush resulted in the construction of the railroad in 1884. It also led to a classic Wild West culture, with saloons, gambling houses and brothels behind the respectable Victorian facades of the present-day Gaslamp Quarter. But when gold played out, the economy took a nosedive and the city’s population plummeted by as much as 50%.
Spurred by San Francisco’s international exhibition of 1914, San Diego’s staged the Panama–California Exposition (1915–16), aiming to attract investment to the city with its deepwater port, railroad hub and perfect climate. Boosters built exhibition halls (Click here) in the romantic Spanish Colonial style that still defines much of the city today.
However it was the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor that permanently made San Diego. Top brass quickly chose San Diego, with its excellent, protected port, as home of the US Pacific Fleet. The military literally reshaped the city, dredging the harbor, building landfill islands, and constructing vast tracts of instant housing.
The opening of the University of California campus in the 1960s heralded a new era as students and faculty slowly drove a liberal wedge into the city’s homogenous, flag-and-family culture. The university, especially strong in the sciences, has also become an incubator for the region’s biotech sector.
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DOWNTOWN & AROUND
The city of San Diego offers diverse museums and a world-class zoo, eye-popping architecture and toe-tapping music. The coastal communities, including Coronado, Ocean, Mission and Pacific Beaches, La Jolla and North County are covered in separate sections.
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ORIENTATION
San Diego’s downtown, a compact grid northeast of San Diego Bay, revolves around the historic Gaslamp Quarter, a beehive of restaurants, bars and boutiques; the convention center sits to its southwest along the water, and office towers rise to the north. Within the city center, north–south ‘avenues’ are numbered (First, Second etc), while east–west ‘streets’ are lettered (A, B, C etc) heading south and named after trees in alphabetical order (Ash, Beech etc) heading north.
The airport, train station and Greyhound bus terminal are all in or near downtown San Diego. I-5 is the main north–south freeway, connecting San Diego with Los Angeles, Orange County and Tijuana; I-8 runs east from Ocean Beach, up Mission Valley and eventually into Arizona. The Cabrillo Fwy (CA163) heads north from downtown through Balboa Park.
Waterfront attractions along the Embarcadero