Balboa Park

Before it was a park, a Kumeyaay village sat in Florida Canyon, just south of what is now Naval Medical Center San Diego. It survived the 1852 effort to remove Kumeyaay villages within half a mile of the city. Under José Manuel Polton, known as Hatam, it grew into an urban neighborhood for Native Californians and Baja Californians looking for work in San Diego. It lasted into the 1890s, until it was dismantled to make way for the park.

In 1835 the authorities of Alta California set aside a 1,400-acre (570 ha) tract of pueblo land for public recreation, a practice Spain and Mexico followed. On February 15, 1868, a trustee named E. W. Morse, who had picked the site with the developer Alonzo Horton, asked the city's Board of Trustees to create a park from two 160-acre plots northeast of New Town. The board approved a larger reservation of nine plots, totaling 1,400 acres, on May 26, 1868. In 1870 a state law required the lands to be held in trust forever as a park.

The park nearly disappeared in 1871. At the urging of would-be land speculators and the city attorney, State Senator James McCoy quietly introduced a bill to repeal the law. A San Diego resident found out and told officials in Sacramento, the plot leaked to the press, residents signed petitions, and the bill died. San Diego was the second city in the country to dedicate a large park, after New York City's Central Park in 1858.

For its first decades the land, called City Park, stayed mostly open space with no trees and plenty of wildflowers, bobcats, rattlesnakes and coyotes. The horticulturist Kate Sessions ran a 36-acre nursery there, open to the public, and gave trees and plants to the city every year. She is often called the mother of Balboa Park and was the first woman to win the Meyer Medal for foreign plant importation. In 1909, Chamber of Commerce president G. Aubrey Davidson proposed an exposition for the 1915 opening of the Panama Canal. The city picked the name Balboa in 1910.

San Diego was the smallest city ever to host a World's Fair, with a population of less than 40,000. The Panama-California Exposition cost $5 million at the start. D. C. Collier, its general director, chose the central mesa, a Mission Revival style and the theme of human progress. Bertram Goodhue and Carleton Winslow created the Spanish Colonial Revival look, which beat out a bid by Irving Gill and became the main vernacular style in much of California. Construction began with a groundbreaking ceremony in July 1911, and the Cabrillo Bridge was completed on April 12, 1914.

The exposition opened on December 31, 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson pushed a telegraph button in Washington, D.C. to turn on the power. Over 40,000 red poinsettias bloomed for the occasion. It was extended through 1916 and drew more than 3.7 million visitors, among them Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Theodore Roosevelt, and even made a small profit. Most buildings were meant to last only until 1916, but Roosevelt liked them and city leaders voted to keep them. Several still stand, including the Cabrillo Bridge, the California Tower, the Botanical Building, the Spreckels Organ Pavilion and the California State Building, now the Museum of Us.

The second exposition, the California Pacific International Exposition, came in 1935 to lift the city out of the Great Depression. The architect Richard S. Requa redesigned the park and oversaw many new buildings. The Old Globe Theatre, the International Cottages and the Spanish Village all date from then. It was funded at $20 million, ran for two seasons, and drew 6.7 million visitors, almost double the first fair.

During both World War I and World War II the Navy took over the park. By 1917 more than 5,000 troops were training there, and a Marine barracks operated from December 19, 1914 until 1921. In World War II the park was renamed Camp Kidd, and wounded sailors from Pearl Harbor were treated in its hospital wards. It returned to civilian control in 1946, and repairs cost $840,000, most of it reimbursed by the Navy.

Rebuilding followed. The carillon in the California Tower was added in 1946, and the San Diego Junior Theatre began in 1948. By 1967 the city and private groups such as the Committee of 100 were restoring the exposition buildings, many of which were falling apart. New museums arrived: the Timken Museum of Art in 1965, the Centro Cultural de la Raza in 1970 and the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in 1973. In 1978 arson fires destroyed the Aerospace Museum in the old Electric Building and the 1935 Old Globe Theatre. The Globe was rebuilt and reopened in 1981.

By 2001, over 12 million people were visiting each year. The nonprofit Balboa Park Conservancy launched on September 14, 2010. The 100th anniversary in 2015 turned into a grassroots celebration with special exhibits at every institution after a planned city-wide event fell apart in 2014.

A long fight also shaped the park. A plan from 2010 would have removed cars from the Plaza de Panama and the California Quadrangle and routed them to a new underground garage. The Save Our Heritage Organisation sued, and a judge voided the first plan in February 2013. The city later re-approved a version in 2016, now priced at $79 million, with 797 paid parking spaces in a three-level garage. All other parking in the park stays free.

El Prado, a long, wide promenade, runs through the center of the park. Most of its buildings are Spanish Colonial Revival, richly ornamented in the style of Spain and New Spain. Along it are the Museum of Us, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Art Institute, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, the San Diego Natural History Museum, the San Diego History Center, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the Timken Museum of Art. The Mingei International Museum, the Air and Space Museum and the Automotive Museum are close by. The Botanical Building, designed by Carleton Winslow, was the largest wood lath structure in the world when it was built in 1915.

The park has many gardens: Alcazar Garden, the Desert Cactus Garden, the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden, the Japanese Friendship Garden, Palm Canyon, Zoro Garden and more. For the stage, there is the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, home to one of the world's largest outdoor pipe organs, the Old Globe Theatre complex with a replica of Shakespeare's Globe, and the outdoor Starlight Bowl. The Casa del Prado Theater hosts the San Diego Junior Theatre, the country's oldest children's theatre program. The House of Pacific Relations International Cottages put on free shows.

The San Diego Zoo is inside the park, though the city's parks department does not run it. It shows more than 4,000 rare and endangered animals and is divided into areas such as Lost Forest, Northern Frontier, Outback and Elephant Odyssey. A Skyfari aerial tram carries visitors across it. Near the zoo entrance are a carousel and a miniature railroad. On the east side, Morley Field has an 18-hole public golf course, a velodrome, tennis courts, archery ranges, a swimming pool and a disc golf course. The Spanish Art Village is a cluster of art studios and shops.

Free organ concerts play at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion each Sunday at 2:00 p.m. year round. December Nights, held on the first full weekend of December, was originally called Christmas on the Prado. EarthFair, one of the largest free environmental fairs in the country, takes place every April. In 2010, over 70,000 people attended. San Diego Pride, a two-day festival, fills the Marston Point area each July, and a cherry blossom festival comes in March at the Japanese Friendship Garden. The Foot Locker Cross Country Championships ran in Morley Field every year from 1979 to 2024, and several marathons start or end in the park.

The main entrance is over the Cabrillo Bridge and through the California Quadrangle, which for now is a two-lane road. Park Boulevard runs north to south through the park, and the 5th and 6th Avenues link it to downtown and Hillcrest. State Route 163 has no direct connection into the park. A large lot at Inspiration Point on Park Boulevard has a free tram to many museums, and the zoo has its own lot. MTS bus Route 7 and the Rapid 215 run along Park Boulevard. FlixBus stops on Presidents Way near Pan American Plaza.

The park has also been a movie location. Citizen Kane used its buildings for Xanadu, with the zoo standing in for a private menagerie. Traffic was filmed here, and the California Tower appears in Almost Famous. The cover photo of the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds was taken at the zoo's children's petting zoo.