The Kumeyaay (Tipai-Ipai) people lived on San Diego Bay and its mesas for thousands of years before European contact, and remain part of the region today.
The early twentieth century gave the city its grandest set piece. For the Panama-California Exposition of 1915–16 — staged to mark San Diego as the first U.S. port of call for ships coming north through the new Panama Canal — architect Bertram Goodhue filled Balboa Park with a Spanish Colonial Revival fantasia of towers, arches, and tiled domes, on parkland the horticulturist Kate Sessions had been planting with trees since the 1890s. The California Tower, the Cabrillo Bridge, and the Botanical Building still stand, and the park grew into the largest urban cultural park in the country. Add the Victorian turrets of the 1888 Hotel del Coronado across the bay and the white adobe of the old mission, and San Diego's look comes into focus: mission, Victorian seaside, and Spanish-colonial arch, all under the same bright sky.
Why People Visit San Diego
San Diego rewards visitors with a rare mix: deep early-California history, a working Navy harbor, great parks, and miles of Pacific coast under a famously mild sky. People come for Balboa Park and the bay, the beaches and Point Loma sunsets, and the story of the city where California began — historic, easygoing, unmistakably Californian.
