claiming California for the
Spanish Empire in 1542. Loma is the
Spanish word for hill. The original Spanish name of the peninsula was La Punta de la Loma de San Diego, translated as Hill Point of San Diego. This was later
anglicized to Point Loma. The original
Kumeyaay name was 'Amat Kunyily' meaning "black earth". There were no permanent indigenous settlements on Point Loma because of a lack of fresh water.
Kumeyaay people did probably have a seasonal village remembered by them as
Totakamalam and visited
Ocean Beach periodically to harvest mussels, clams, abalone and lobsters. More than 200 years were to pass before a permanent European settlement was established in San Diego in 1769.
Mission San Diego itself was in the
San Diego River valley, but its port was a bayside beach in Point Loma called
La Playa (Spanish for beach). The historic
La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail on the
West Coast, led from the Mission and Presidio to La Playa, where ships anchored and unloaded their cargoes via small boats. Part of the route became present-day Rosecrans Street. 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, accumulated cattle hides for export, and hunted for wood and jackrabbits in the hills of Point Loma. The beach at La Playa continued to serve as San Diego's "port" until the establishment of New Town (current
downtown) in the 1870s. Ballast Point got its name from the practice of ships discarding their
ballast there on arriving in San Diego Bay and taking on ballast as they left for the open ocean.
Fort Guijarros was constructed at Ballast Point in 1797. Ballast Point and La Playa are now on the grounds of
Naval Base Point Loma. The longtime association of San Diego with the U.S. military began in Point Loma. The southern portion of the Point Loma peninsula was set aside for military purposes as early as 1852. Over the next several decades the U.S. Army set up a series of coastal artillery batteries and named the area
Fort Rosecrans. Significant U.S. Navy presence in San Diego began in 1901 with the establishment of the Navy Coaling Station in Point Loma.
Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego was commissioned in 1921 and
Naval Training Center San Diego in 1923, both in Point Loma; the Naval Training Center was closed in 1997. During
World War II, the entire southern portion of the peninsula was closed to civilians and used for military purposes, including a battery of
coast artillery. Following the war the area retained multiple Navy commands, including a submarine base and a
Navy Electronics Laboratory; they were eventually consolidated into
Naval Base Point Loma. Other portions of Fort Rosecrans became
Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery and
Cabrillo National Monument. built in 1901 Following the death in 1891 of
Helena Blavatsky, its founder,
Katherine Tingley moved the headquarters of the
Theosophical Society to "
Lomaland", a hilltop campus in Point Loma overlooking the ocean. the Society also experimented widely with planting trees and crops such as
eucalyptus and
avocado, giving that formerly barren part of Point Loma its current
heavily wooded character. The Lomaland site is now the campus of
Point Loma Nazarene University. During the 1920s there was a dirt airstrip known as Dutch Flats in what is now the
Midway neighborhood of Point Loma. That is where
Charles Lindbergh first tested and flew his airplane,
The Spirit of St. Louis, which had been built in San Diego by the
Ryan Aeronautical Company. A U.S. Post Office now located on the site contains several historic plaques commemorating Dutch Flats and Lindbergh. preparing for takeoff in a Bowlus "Model A" sailplane on January 19, 1930, at Point Loma Due to the prevailing sea-breezes and long north–south ridge, Point Loma was a well-known gliding site during 1929–1935.
William Hawley Bowlus, the Superintendent of Construction on the
Spirit of St. Louis and a resident of Point Loma, built the first American sailplane, the Bowlus SP-1, and flew that aircraft along the west side of Point Loma to establish new American endurance records. Bowlus later used other refined designs to soar for over 9 hours near Cabrillo National Monument, and one of Bowlus' students, Jack C. Barstow, soared over Point Loma for over 15 hours in 1930 to establish an unofficial world record for soaring endurance. In light of these accomplishments, Point Loma was named as a
National Landmark of Soaring by the National Soaring Museum in 1996 with a plaque near the launching area at Cabrillo National Monument.) Perched atop the southern point that creates the entrance of the bay with Coronado, the small, two-story lighthouse was completed in 1854 and first lit on November 15, 1855. At above sea level at the entrance of the bay, the seemingly good location for a lighthouse soon proved to be a poor choice, as fog and cloud within the
marine layer often obscured the beam for ocean-going vessels. On March 23, 1891, the lighthouse ceased to be used for its original purpose, as a
new lighthouse was built nearer sea level on the same southern point. The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is now partially open to the public and has been refurbished to its historic 1880s interior. It is located within
Cabrillo National Monument, named after
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first
European explorer to see
San Diego Bay. The lighthouse is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places. In addition to the lighthouse, there are five other sites in Point Loma listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Cabrillo National Monument, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, the
Marine Corps Recruit Depot Historic District,
Naval Training Center San Diego, and
Rosecroft. Point Loma is recognized as a
National Landmark of Soaring of the National Soaring Museum because of the many record flights that took place along the promontory. Two plaques honoring these accomplishments are near the entrance to
Cabrillo National Monument. ==Geography==