Solana Beach

San Elijo Lagoon sits just north of Solana Beach, in the southernmost part of the city of Encinitas, with Rancho Santa Fe inland and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of the largest remaining coastal wetlands in San Diego County. The ecological reserve covers 915 acres and marks the end of the Escondido Creek watershed, which spreads over 54,112 acres. The Kumeyaay village of Kulaumai stood on the lagoon's southern banks. Shell middens show that people hunted and gathered along the estuary at least 8,500 years before European settlers arrived, and that they ate scallops, clams, shark, barracuda, bonito and abalone.

The Portola Expedition named the area San Alejo in 1769, in honor of Saint Alexius. Later, settlers founded the farming community of Olivenhain along Escondido Creek, and farmers planting upstream changed the plants and terrain around the lagoon for the first time. They also brought in non-native plants that proved highly invasive. Between 1880 and 1940, dikes and levees went in for duck hunting, salt harvesting and sewage settling ponds. The longest-lasting changes came from transportation. The Santa Fe Railroad's Surf Line arrived in 1887, Pacific Coast Highway 101 in 1891 and Interstate 5 in 1965, and each needed a supporting berm that cut down the flow of water in and out of the lagoon.

Six plant communities grow inside the reserve: coastal strand, salt marsh, riparian scrub, coastal sage scrub, freshwater marsh and mixed chaparral. Counts list more than 300 plant species, at least 23 fish species and 300 bird species, and about 40% of all bird species in North America have been spotted there. Eight miles of trails open from dawn until dusk, and dogs are allowed on leashes. A quarter-mile loop starts at the Nature Center, a 5,600-square-foot building that earned LEED Platinum certification. It opened in Spring 2009 and replaced a center that opened in 1988. Parking is free, and there are no restrooms on the trails. Each spring, after the last winter storm, crews dredge open the lagoon's mouth at Cardiff State Beach so the tides can flow in and out again. The California Department of Fish and Game, the County of San Diego and Nature Collective manage the reserve.

The first settlers were the San Dieguitos, early Holocene inhabitants. The Kumeyaay came later and set up a village called Kulaumai on the southern banks of San Elijo Lagoon. In the Spanish colonial era, trails heading north crossed inland to avoid the marshes and inlets here. The George H. Jones family were the first European settlers, arriving in 1886. The area was called Lockwood Mesa until 1923.

Growth started with water. The Lake Hodges Dam was built in 1917 and 1918, and the 12,000-acre Santa Fe Irrigation District followed in 1918. In 1922 Colonel Ed Fletcher, an early community leader and developer, bought 140 acres at $20 an acre from farmer George H. Jones to create the town. His brother-in-law Eugene Batchelder helped. To open a way to the beach, one man spent three months with a fire hose, using water from the Lake Hodges Dam spillway, to wash away the earth and carve out the Fletcher Cove entry. The beach opened on July 4, 1925, with horse races on the sand.

The man behind the town had come a long way. Ed Fletcher was born in Littleton, Massachusetts, and arrived in San Diego alone in 1888 with $6.10 in his pocket, selling produce. He moved into real estate in 1901, and in 1908 he started a partnership with William J. Gross that developed Grossmont, Casa de Oro-Mount Helix and Del Mar. The title Colonel came in 1907, when he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the California National Guard, and it stuck for the rest of his life.

Fletcher's real interests were water and roads. In 1910 he and James A. Murray bought the San Diego Flume Company and renamed it the Cuyamaca Water Company. Later he served in the California State Senate from 1934 until January 6, 1947, and he wrote the laws that created the San Diego County Water Authority. Fletcher Cove, the beach he opened with a fire hose, carries his name today. So does Fletcher Point, on the southern shore of Lake Hodges.

The reservoir behind that dam is still at work. Lake Hodges lies in the city of San Diego, about 31 miles north of downtown. Lake Hodges Dam is a multiple-arch dam on the San Dieguito River, 131 feet tall and 729 feet long, designed by John S. Eastwood and completed in 1918. The city of San Diego owns the lake, and it supplies the Santa Fe Irrigation District and the San Dieguito Water District.

The community grew slowly but steadily, with a boom in the decade after World War II and a real estate boom in the last quarter of the 20th century. It incorporated as the city of Solana Beach in 1986. That same year the city hosted the funeral of Desi Arnaz, who had died in Del Mar, at St. James Roman Catholic Church. In 2003 the city got national news coverage as the first in the continental United States to ban smoking on its public beaches. It was also the last coastal community in North San Diego County to ban alcohol on the beach.

One of its oldest neighborhoods is La Colonia de Eden Gardens, also called La Colonia. Mexican farmers hired by the owners of big ranches in neighboring Rancho Santa Fe formed it in the 1920s, because they wanted their families nearby. The name Eden Gardens came later from a land developer. Many residents still say La Colonia. The rapper Lil Rob was born and raised there.

Fletcher Cove is the main beach, at the end of Lomas Santa Fe Drive west of the freeway. The city hosts a free summer concert series, Concerts at the Cove, at Fletcher Cove Park, and a free two-day festival, Fiesta Del Sol, which has run for more than 40 years. A Junior Lifeguard Program teaches ocean safety, CPR and first aid.

The Cedros Design District has more than 85 art galleries, import and antique stores, boutiques and cafes. A Sunday farmers market runs there. The Belly Up, a live music venue on Cedros Avenue, has been in operation since 1974. Nisus Software, maker of the Nisus Writer word processor for the Macintosh, has its headquarters in the city.

The median age in 2020 was 47.2, and 23.6 percent of residents were 65 or older. There were 5,646 households with an average size of 2.29, and 62.5 percent of homes were owner-occupied. A 2023 estimate put median household income at $150,820. The Solana Beach School District and the San Dieguito Union High School District serve the city, with Canyon Crest Academy, San Dieguito Academy and Torrey Pines High School among the public high schools.

Solana Beach station is served by Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner and the Coaster commuter rail, and it sits downtown off Lomas Santa Fe and Cedros. Interstate 5 cuts through the community. The Breeze bus service of the North County Transit District also runs here.

Solana Beach station was built in 1994 to replace a depot in Del Mar, two miles south, that had been in use since the early 1900s. The architect, Rob Wellington Quigley, took his cue from the Quonset huts that lined North Cedros Avenue in the 1940s. He kept their semicircular shape and added a tower like those on train depots from the second half of the 19th century. Paying for it took $2.8 million from Proposition 116, a ballot measure for passenger rail, and $3.3 million from Transnet, a half-cent county sales tax, for land and design.

In the late 1990s an $18 million project lowered the tracks and platforms into a trench. That made room for another track and platform and removed the railroad crossing south of the station, which eased congestion on Lomas Santa Fe and downtown. The old Del Mar depot closed in 1995, and in 2021 the new station ranked 14th among California's Amtrak stops, with 94,621 riders. For much of its life it had been the only passenger stop between Oceanside and San Diego, and a regional planning committee had voted to close it as early as 1989, citing limited parking, poor access and trouble fitting in buses. Amtrak chose Solana Beach. The Del Mar depot and its platform still stand beside the tracks and are often leased for weddings.

The Solana Beach School District was founded in 1925. It has seven elementary schools and a Child Development Center, and it enrolls about 3,000 students from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. Its boundaries reach past the city to take in Carmel Valley, Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe, and a five-member board of education governs it.

High school students go to the San Dieguito Union High School District, set up in 1936. Before that, students from coastal North County went to high school in Oceanside. In January 1936 voters in Encinitas, Cardiff, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Green Valley and Olivenhain approved a new district, and the first classes met that September at San Dieguito Union High School, designed by the architect Lillian J. Rice. The district now serves over 13,000 students and runs five middle schools. Earl Warren Middle School, the first of them, is in Solana Beach.