Pre-colonial period , referred to by the Spanish as
Diegueños, have inhabited the area for thousands of years. What has been referred to as the
San Dieguito complex was established in the area at least 9,000 years ago. The
Kumeyaay may have culturally evolved from this complex or migrated into the area around 1000 C.E. Archaeologist
Malcolm Rogers hypothesized that the early cultures of San Diego were separate from the Kumeyaay, but this claim is disputed. Rogers later reevaluated his claims, yet they were influential in shaping historical tellings of early San Diego history. The village of Kosa'aay was made up of thirty to forty families living in pyramid-shaped housing structures and was supported by a freshwater spring from the hillsides. In November 1602,
Sebastián Vizcaíno surveyed the harbor and what are now
Mission Bay and
Point Loma and named the area for the Catholic
Saint Didacus, a
Spaniard more commonly known as
San Diego de Alcalá. The permanent
European colonization of both California and San Diego began in 1769 with the arrival of four contingents of Spaniards from New Spain and the
Baja California peninsula. Two seaborne parties reached San Diego Bay: the
San Carlos, under Vicente Vila and including as notable members the engineer and cartographer
Miguel Costansó and the soldier and future governor
Pedro Fages, and the
San Antonio, under
Juan Pérez. An initial overland expedition to San Diego from the south was led by the soldier
Fernando Rivera and included the
Franciscan missionary, explorer, and chronicler
Juan Crespí, followed by a second party led by the designated governor
Gaspar de Portolá and including the mission president
Junípero Serra. was founded in 1769 by
Saint Junípero Serra, making it the oldest of the
Spanish missions in California. In May 1769, Portolà established the
Presidio of San Diego on a hill near the
San Diego River above the Kumeyaay village of Cosoy, The mission became a site for a Kumeyaay revolt in 1775, which forced the mission to relocate up the San Diego River. By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in and around the mission proper. Mission San Diego was the southern anchor in Alta California of the historic mission trail
El Camino Real. Both the Presidio and the Mission are
National Historic Landmarks.
Mexican period served as commandant of the
Presidio of San Diego and founded the
Estudillo family, a powerful clan of
Californios. In 1821, Mexico
won its independence from Spain, and San Diego became part of the Mexican territory of
Alta California. In 1822, Mexico began its attempt to extend its authority over the coastal territory of Alta California. The fort on Presidio Hill was gradually abandoned, while the town of San Diego grew up on the level land below Presidio Hill. The Mission was
secularized by the Mexican government in 1834, and most of the Mission lands were granted to former soldiers. The 432
residents of the town petitioned the governor to form a
pueblo, and
Juan María Osuna was elected the first
alcalde ("municipal magistrate"). Beyond the town, Mexican
land grants expanded the number of
California ranchos that modestly added to the local economy. However, San Diego had been losing population throughout the 1830s due to increasing tension between the settlers and the indigenous
Kumeyaay. In 1838 the town lost its pueblo status because its size dropped to an estimated 100 to 150 residents. The
ranchos in the San Diego region faced Kumeyaay raids in the late 1830s and the town itself faced raids in the 1840s. Americans gained an increased awareness of California and its commercial possibilities from the writings of two countrymen involved in the hide and tallow trade, which was often officially forbidden to foreigners but economically significant, with San Diego serving as a major port and the only one with an adequate harbor:
William Shaler's "Journal of a Voyage Between China and the North-Western Coast of America, Made in 1804" and
Richard Henry Dana's more substantial and convincing account, of his 1834–36 voyage,
Two Years Before the Mast. , built 1827, is one of San Diego's oldest buildings and served as inspiration for
Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel
Ramona. In 1846, the United States went to war against Mexico and sent a naval and land
expedition to conquer Alta California. At first, they had an easy time of it, capturing the major ports including San Diego, but the Californios in southern Alta California struck back. Following the successful revolt in
Los Angeles, the American garrison at San Diego was driven out without firing a shot in early October 1846. Mexican partisans held San Diego for three weeks until October 24, 1846, when the Americans recaptured it. For the next several months the Americans were blockaded inside the pueblo. Skirmishes occurred daily and snipers shot into the town every night. The Californios drove cattle away from the pueblo hoping to starve the Americans and their Californio supporters out. On December 1, the American garrison learned that the dragoons of General
Stephen W. Kearney were at
Warner's Ranch. Commodore
Robert F. Stockton sent a mounted force of fifty under Captain
Archibald Gillespie to march north to meet him. Their joint command of 150 men, returning to San Diego, encountered about 93 Californios under
Andrés Pico. was a decisive battle between American and
Californio forces. In the ensuing
Battle of San Pasqual, fought in the
San Pasqual Valley which is now part of the city of San Diego, the Americans suffered their worst losses in the campaign. Subsequently, a column led by Lieutenant Gray arrived from San Diego, rescuing Kearny's command. Stockton and Kearny went on to recover Los Angeles and force the capitulation of Alta California with the "
Treaty of Cahuenga" on January 13, 1847. As a result of the
Mexican–American War of 1846–48, the territory of Alta California, including San Diego, was ceded to the United States by Mexico, under the terms of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. The Mexican negotiators of that treaty tried to retain San Diego as part of Mexico, but the Americans insisted that San Diego was "for every commercial purpose of nearly equal importance to us with that of San Francisco", and the Mexican–American border was eventually established to be one league south of the southernmost point of
San Diego Bay.
American period in 1873 following the
U.S. conquest of California The state of California was admitted to the
United States in 1850. That same year San Diego was designated the seat of the newly established County of San Diego and was incorporated as a city.
Joshua H. Bean, the last alcalde of San Diego, was elected the first mayor. Two years later the city was bankrupt; the California legislature revoked the city's charter and placed it under control of a board of trustees, where it remained until 1889. A city charter was reestablished in 1889, and today's city charter was adopted in 1931. The original town of San Diego was located at the foot of Presidio Hill, in the area which is now
Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. The location was not ideal, being several miles away from navigable water at its port at
La Playa. In 1850,
William Heath Davis promoted a new development by the bay shore called "New San Diego", several miles south of the original settlement; however, for several decades the new development consisted only of a pier, a few houses and an
Army depot for the support of
Fort Yuma. After 1854, the fort became supplied by sea and by
steamboats on the Colorado River and the depot fell into disuse. From 1857 to 1860, San Diego became the western terminus of the
San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line, the earliest overland
stagecoach and mail operation from the
Eastern United States to California, coming from
Texas through
New Mexico Territory in less than 30 days. honors
Alonzo Horton, who helped develop
Downtown. In the late 1860s,
Alonzo Horton promoted a move to the bayside area, which he called "New Town" and which became
downtown San Diego. Horton promoted the area heavily, and people and businesses began to relocate to New Town because its location on
San Diego Bay was convenient to shipping. New Town soon eclipsed the original settlement, known to this day as
Old Town, and became the economic and governmental heart of the city. Still, San Diego remained a relative backwater town until the arrival of a railroad connection in 1878. In 1912, San Diego was the site of a
free speech fight between the
Industrial Workers of the World and the city government who passed an ordinance forbidding the
freedom of speech along an area of "Soapbox Row" that led to civil disobedience,
vigilantism,
police violence, the abduction of
Emma Goldman's husband
Ben Reitman and
multiple riots. San Diego's proximity to Tijuana during the
Mexican Revolution made this one of the most significant
free speech fights during the
Wobbly era. In 1916, the neighborhood of
Stingaree, the original home of San Diego's first
Chinatown and "Soapbox Row", was demolished by anti-
vice campaigners to make way for the
Gaslamp Quarter. was built for the
Panama-California Exposition of 1915. In the early part of the 20th century, San Diego hosted the
World's Fair twice: the
Panama–California Exposition in 1915 and the
California Pacific International Exposition in 1935. Both expositions were held in
Balboa Park, and many of the Spanish/Baroque-style buildings that were built for those expositions remain to this day as central features of the park. The menagerie of exotic animals featured at the 1915 exposition provided the basis for the
San Diego Zoo. During the 1950s there was a citywide festival called
Fiesta del Pacifico highlighting the area's Spanish and Mexican past. The southern portion of the
Point Loma peninsula was set aside for military purposes as early as 1852. Over the next several decades the
Army set up a series of coastal artillery batteries and named the area
Fort Rosecrans. Significant U.S. Navy presence began in 1901 with the establishment of the Navy Coaling Station in Point Loma, and expanded greatly during the 1920s. By 1930, the city was host to
Naval Base San Diego,
Naval Training Center San Diego,
San Diego Naval Hospital,
Camp Matthews, and
Camp Kearny (now
Marine Corps Air Station Miramar). The city was also an early center for aviation: as early as World War I, San Diego was proclaiming itself "The Air Capital of the West". The city was home to important airplane developers and manufacturers like Ryan Airlines (later
Ryan Aeronautical), founded in 1925, and
Consolidated Aircraft (later
Convair), founded in 1923.
Charles A. Lindbergh's plane, the
Spirit of St. Louis, was built in San Diego in 1927 by Ryan Airlines. During the final months of the war, the Japanese had a plan to target multiple U.S. cities for
biological attack, starting with San Diego. The plan was called "
Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night" and called for
kamikaze planes filled with fleas infected with plague (
Yersinia pestis) to crash into civilian population centers in the city, hoping to spread plague in the city and effectively kill tens of thousands of civilians. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but the plan was not carried out because
Japan surrendered five weeks earlier. After World War II, the military continued to play a major role in the local economy, but post–
Cold War cutbacks took a heavy toll on the local defense and aerospace industries. The resulting downturn led San Diego leaders to seek to diversify the city's economy by focusing on research and science, as well as tourism. In the early 1960s,
Tom Hom would become the first Asian American member of the San Diego City Council. He would be succeeded by
Leon Williams, the first Black member of the city council. , underwent
redevelopment. From the start of the 20th century through the 1970s, the American
tuna fishing fleet and tuna canning industry were based in San Diego, "the tuna capital of the world". San Diego's first tuna cannery was founded in 1911, and by the mid-1930s the canneries employed more than 1,000 people. A large fishing fleet supported the canneries, mostly staffed by immigrant fishermen from
Japan, and later from the
Azores and
Italy whose influence is still felt in neighborhoods like
Little Italy and
Point Loma. Due to rising costs and foreign competition, the last of the canneries closed in the early 1980s. Downtown San Diego was in decline in the 1960s and 1970s, but experienced some urban renewal since the early 1980s, including the opening of
Horton Plaza, the revival of the Gaslamp Quarter, and the construction of the
San Diego Convention Center;
Petco Park opened in 2004. Outside of downtown, San Diego annexed large swaths of land and for suburban expansion to the north and control of the
San Ysidro Port of Entry. As the
Cold War ended, the military shrank and so did defense spending. San Diego has since become a center of the emerging biotech industry and is home to telecommunications giant
Qualcomm. San Diego had also grown in the tourism industry with the popularity of attractions such as the
San Diego Zoo,
SeaWorld San Diego, and
Legoland California in
Carlsbad. ==Geography==