marks the northern boundary of the Midway area|thumb|left Historically the area was part of the
San Diego River delta, comprising the flat land between the hill of the
San Diego Presidio and the hills of
Point Loma. The San Diego River switched back and forth between emptying into
Mission Bay (called False Bay by the early settlers) and emptying through the Midway area into
San Diego Bay. Sometime during the 1820s, the river switched its course from False Bay to San Diego Bay. Because of fears that San Diego Bay might silt up, the river was confined to its present course north of Point Loma by a levee built by the city in 1877. This exposed the flat, marshy areas of Midway for development.
Rosecrans Street, a main thoroughfare through Midway and Point Loma, follows the route of the historic
La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail in the
Western United States. It connected the settlements in
Old Town and
Mission San Diego with
La Playa, the beach in Point Loma where ships loaded and unloaded cargo. A plaque near the southeast corner of Rosecrans Street and Midway Drive recognizes the historic importance of the La Playa Trail. In 1850, approximately of land in the area was conveyed to a group of ten would-be developers, who subdivided the land in hopes of developing it. The names of some of the original ten investors are remembered in the existing street name system along Pacific Highway, including Emory, Sutherland, Noell, Estudillo, Wright, Banini, Couts, and Witherby. By the early 1900s, central Midway was known as Dutch Flats and still included a lot of standing water. Dutch Flats was also the name of what was originally a small dirt airstrip in the area used by the
Ryan Aeronautical Company, located near what are now Midway and Barnett streets. The company built a factory and established a flight school at the location.
Dutch Flats Airport became famous when Ryan built a specially designed aircraft for
Charles A. Lindbergh, who tested it at Dutch Flats and then used it to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1927. In 1929, pioneer aviator
Ruth Alexander, a graduate of the Ryan Flying School, established a new world record for women in light aircraft on a flight from Dutch Flats. A post office now located on the site contains several historic plaques commemorating Dutch Flats and Lindbergh. In 1921, the Marine Advanced Expeditionary Base (now
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego) was built in the Midway area on Barnett Avenue, lending a boost to the area's economy and setting the stage for future military development. The city of San Diego opened San Diego Municipal Airport/
Lindbergh Field in 1928 on land located between the Midway area and San Diego Bay. As a result, aircraft-related industries and businesses continued to be important for the Midway area up until the present day. During the 1940s, the Midway area experienced a boom, with numerous war-related industrial sites and thousands of people arriving from all over the country to work at them. At first, they had no place to live except ramshackle camps and tent cities. The Federal government then built a large (approximately 4000 units) housing complex for defense workers, known as the Frontier Housing. Areas along Pacific Highway became wartime factories, and later provided the hub of the city's aerospace industry.), two drive-in theaters (the Midway and the Frontier), and a bowling alley (Frontier Lanes). The only remaining structure from that era is the Loma Theater on Rosecrans St., which opened in 1944 as a 1188-seat movie palace in the
Arte Moderne style; it is now a bookstore with some of the Arte Moderne architectural features retained, including the neon sign. From the 1960s to the present the area became less industrial and more commercial. It is now mainly known for large region-serving retail establishments and multi-lane traffic arteries. The Frontier development housed 20,000 people and had three schools, a recreation center, and a library. It was unusual in the Point Loma area because of the diversity of its residents, which made existing homeowners uncomfortable; they lobbied the city to replace the development with something else. During the 1960s the entire housing project was demolished and replaced with the Sports Arena and large retail and commercial areas. building on Pacific Highway, built in 1912, is now on the
National Register of Historic Places|thumb|right During the 1990s the city proposed to build a “bay to bay” water link between San Diego Bay and Mission Bay, which would have run right through the Midway area. However, the plan received little community support and was abandoned after a consultant's report deemed it not economically feasible. The area contains two sites that are listed on the
National Register of Historic Places:
Mission Brewery, a five-story brick building on Hancock Street dating from 1912, originally a brewery but now used for offices and retail; and the
Marine Corps Recruit Depot Historic District. Additional sites listed as historic by the San Diego Historical Resources Board include the site of a Hebrew cemetery (now a residential building) on Kenyon Street and Dutch Flats/Ryan Field. ==Geography==