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. 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.
Today San Diego is where California began, on a bay that has been America's harbor since 1769. Its story runs from the Kumeyaay homeland and Cabrillo's landing, through the first mission and the New Town on the water, to the Exposition's towers and the Navy fleet that still calls the harbor home. Our San Diego designs gather that identity into wearable form — the bear and star, the bay, and the city that never quite turns the lights off. San Diego, California: where the West Coast story started, on a working harbor.
Why People Visit San Diego
San Diego rewards visitors with a rare mix: deep early-California history, a working Navy harbor, world-class parks and museums, and miles of Pacific coast, all under a famously mild sky. People come for Balboa Park and the bay, for the beaches and the sunsets off Point Loma, and for the layered story of the city where California began. It is historic, easygoing, and unmistakably Californian.
