,
California area, 1850, showing the La Playa Trail from La Playa to Old San Diego and the Mission The original area known as La Playa played an important role in the early history of San Diego. The first European to set foot in what is now California,
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, came ashore in 1542 at La Playa, probably at a small rocky peninsula called
Ballast Point. When a permanent European settlement was established a few miles inland in 1769, La Playa served as the town's "harbor", actually an anchorage where cargo was loaded and unloaded via small boats. Goods were then transported to the settlement by land over the historic
La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail on the
West Coast. The anchorage at La Playa continued to serve as San Diego’s main port until the establishment of New Town (current
downtown) in the 1870s. In his book
Two Years Before the Mast,
Richard Henry Dana Jr. describes how sailors in the 1830s camped on the beach at La Playa and hunted for wood and rabbits in the hills of Point Loma. The beach at La Playa became an informal town of up to 800 people during the
Mexican years (1822–1846), centered on a dozen or so huge "hide houses" where cattle hides were processed and stored until they could be exported for sale. The hide houses were named for the Boston trading ships they served. The first and best known was the
Brookline captained by James O. Locke, where the American flag was first raised over California (unofficially) in 1829. The Old La Playa site was registered as
California Historical Landmark #61 in 1932, and designated as a historical landmark by the San Diego Historical Resources Board in 1970. The original La Playa landing place and
Ballast Point are now on the grounds of Naval Base Point Loma. Nothing visible remains of the original sites, which are accessible to the public during the annual Cabrillo Festival ==References==