Establishment and early years The camp was established by the Army in 1917 on of land on a mesa north of San Diego. The area included the Miramar Ranch, which had originally been established by newspaperman
E. W. Scripps and later sold to the Jessop family. It was Scripps who named the area Miramar, meaning "view of the sea". The new base was named in honor of Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny, a leader in the
Mexican–American War who also served as a
military governor of California. Camp Kearny was one of 32 new camps created by the Army in 1917 as a mobilization and training facility for troops on their way to battlegrounds of
World War I. The first commander was Major
James S. McKnight. Army aircraft occasionally landed on the parade ground, but an actual airfield was not established during World War I. After the war, the camp was used as a demobilization center;
Joseph E. Kuhn commanded the post until it was closed in 1920. It was largely abandoned after 1920 but was retained by the government for use as a military and civilian airfield. The
U.S. Public Health Service used it for a time. The mast was used for visits by the Navy's two enormous airships, the
USS Akron and
USS Macon, each long. The
Akron first visited Camp Kearny on 11 May 1932. That mooring ended in disaster when a gust of wind carried the airship upward, killing two ground handlers and injuring a third. However, the Navy continued to use the facility, and the
Macon moored at Camp Kearny four times during 1934. In 1940 the Navy began a series of projects to improve and expand Camp Kearny. By 1941 the base contained more than . named for Major-General
Thomas Holcomb who was then commandant of the Marine Corps. By 1940 the number of volunteer recruits was overwhelming the local training base,
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, so the Marines replaced Camp Holcomb with a much larger training base directly east of Camp Kearny which was called
Camp Elliott, named for
George F. Elliott, a former commandant of the Marine Corps. Camp Elliott was used mostly as a replacement and casual center during World War II. It was turned over to the Navy in June 1944 because of the service's pressing need for additional facilities to use as a personnel distribution center. After the end of the war, the Navy used Camp Kearny for demobilization. On 1 May 1946, the Navy departed Camp Kearny, handing it over to the Marines, and the station became MCAS Miramar. In 1947, the Marines moved to
MCAS El Toro in Orange County, California, and Miramar was redesignated as a Naval Auxiliary Air Station,
NAAS Miramar, followed by upgrade to full air station status as a
Master Jet Base and renamed
NAS Miramar. Miramar remains active in 2021, as home to the
3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, the aviation element of the
1st Marine Expeditionary Force. ==Rosedale Naval Outlying Landing Field==