Long before any of that, the bay and its mesas were home to the Kumeyaay (Tipai-Ipai) people, who lived across this corner of the coast for thousands of years — fishing the estuaries, gathering in the canyons, and trading along paths that ran inland to the desert and south into what is now Mexico. The Kumeyaay homeland was established and complete long before a European sail appeared on the horizon, and the community remains part of the region today. San Diego's story does not begin in 1769; it begins with them.
European San Diego dates to the summer of 1769, when Spanish expeditions established the Presidio of San Diego and Mission San Diego de Alcalá — the first of the twenty-one California missions and the first European settlement on the West Coast of the present-day United States. It is the event that earned the city its enduring nickname, the 'Birthplace of California.' The mission era is also a difficult history: in 1775 the Kumeyaay rose against the mission in an act of resistance against a system imposed on their land and their lives. San Diego holds both truths at once — the founding that opened California to the wider world, and the people whose home it already was.
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.
