Hillcrest

At first it was a chaparral-covered mesa. Kumeyaay villages were scattered across the region, and Spanish colonization brought the first of twenty-nine California missions with the founding of the nearby San Diego Mission. In 1870 Mary Kearney got a deed from the city for the land that became Hillcrest. Two real estate developers, Arnold and D. Choate, took it over in 1871, and the wealthy railroad tycoon George Hill then bought it.

Real estate development began in 1910 and the area was built out by 1920. In the 1910s Hillcrest was one of the neighborhoods tied to downtown by the streetcars that John D. Spreckels built after the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, and the cars ran here until 1939. During the 1920s and 1930s it was a suburban shopping area for downtown San Diego. After World War II, it was left with aging infrastructure and an aging population.

The sign is the neighborhood's symbol. A lighted HILLCREST sign first went up in 1940 at University and Fifth Avenue, donated by the Hillcrest Women's Association, a group of local female shopkeepers. After it fell into disrepair, it was taken down and rebuilt in 1984. In 2022 the Hillcrest Community Foundation began raising money to renovate it. The sign came down on January 31, 2023, and went back up on February 21 with lighting that can show 16 million colors and pre-programmed shows. It was first relit in purple, gold and green for Mardi Gras.

During the 1970s, gay men and lesbians began setting up homes, businesses and organizations in Hillcrest. In 1974, protesting the city's refusal of a parade permit, 200 gays and lesbians marched through downtown for the first time. The first city-permitted pride parade followed in 1975. In 1980 the community center, founded in Golden Hill in 1973 and now known as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, moved to Hillcrest.

More milestones followed. The Hillcrest Business Association became a business improvement district in 1984 and hosted the first CityFest in 1985. In 2001 Mercy Garden, a former convent, was remodeled for the HIV-positive community. In 2012 the city approved a large, privately funded rainbow flag at University Avenue and Normal Street and renamed Blaine Avenue as Harvey Milk Street. A rainbow crosswalk was unveiled at Normal and University in January 2020.

San Diego Pride is held each July and is considered the largest civic event in the city. The Pride Parade runs on a Saturday morning, preceded by the Hillcrest Block Party on Friday night and followed by a two-day festival in Balboa Park. Work on the Hillcrest Pride Promenade started on February 16, 2025. It turns the west side lanes of Normal Street into pedestrian walkways and rainbow-colored bike paths, with a children's play area, historic lamp posts, seating, 13 new parking spots and 115 new trees. It costs almost $30 million and is expected to be done in late 2026.

Hillcrest is an older neighborhood that has grown through gentrification. Most streets are lined with trees and plants, and buildings range from Craftsman homes to mid-century modern condominium buildings. University Avenue and Washington Street are the major east-west streets, and Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Avenues connect it to downtown through Park West and Bankers Hill.

Several lush canyons and hiking paths cut through the area. Vermont Canyon is at the south end of Vermont Street, and Richmond Canyon is reached by a staircase one block south of Pennsylvania Street. Some trails have historical ties to the Boys and Girls Clubs, the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. A new Vermont Street pedestrian bridge, with public art, was completed in 1994 at a cost of $1.2 million, and another pedestrian-only bridge crosses State Route 163 from Richmond Street to Bankers Hill. The Spruce Street Bridge, a steel-cable suspension footbridge dating from the 1910s, runs through the treetops in south Hillcrest.

The 2000 Census showed a median age of 39 and found that 49.3% of residents had college degrees. Median family income in 1999 was $61,741. The neighborhood is governed by the elected officials of the City of San Diego as part of Council District 3, represented since 2020 by Stephen Whitburn. The Uptown Planners advise the city on land use, and the Hillcrest Town Council, formed in 2007, speaks for renters and homeowners.

The Hillcrest Business Association has existed since 1921 and became a city-approved Business Improvement District in 1984. It pays for beautification projects, looks after the Hillcrest sign, organizes street festivals, runs the Hillcrest Farmers Market and sponsors the annual Taste of Hillcrest, which offers samples from over 50 local bars and restaurants. The commercial area is noted for its many restaurants. Scripps Mercy Hospital and the UC San Diego medical center are both located here, and they have a section of their own below.

CityFest is the annual street festival, with food, live entertainment, a beer garden and street vendors. Other regular events include a weekly farmers market on the grounds of the local Department of Motor Vehicles, a Book Fair and Mardi Gras. The San Diego St. Patrick's Day Parade runs along 6th Avenue each March, followed by an Irish festival. Finest City Improv, an improvisational theater, moved here from North Park in 2019. The neighborhood's only movie theater, an art-house cinema that opened in 1991, closed in January 2025. Marston House, a historic residence on 7th Avenue, offers guided tours.

Nearby Balboa Park supplies much of the area's culture, and the zoo and museums are a short trip south.

San Diego Pride is now a nonprofit organization with year-round programs, but it began small. In 1970 the gay and lesbian community organized a Gay-in, potlucks and community groups. A community hotline led to the Center for Social Services, which opened in 1973 in a house at 2250 B Street. In June 1974 the Center held a pride event with a yard sale, a potluck dinner and an informal parade to Balboa Park and back. Marchers had to stay on the sidewalk because the city had given no parade permit. In 1975 the community secured permits for a rally and a 400-person march.

The parade has run almost every year since. San Diego Pride was incorporated in 1994. After the 1990 festival was nearly rained out in June, it was permanently moved to July to avoid the city's June Gloom weather. In 1993 the parade took its current route, from Hillcrest along University Avenue and 6th Avenue to Balboa Park.

Today the parade has more than 300 floats and entries and is watched by a crowd of over 250,000 people. In 2011 several hundred active and retired military service members marched in T-shirts bearing their branch of service, the first time active-duty personnel marched publicly in a gay pride parade. In 2012 the Department of Defense let service members wear uniforms in the parade, also a first, and the parade started from Harvey Milk Street, the first street in the nation named after Harvey Milk. That year's huge rainbow flag was raised for the first time on July 20, 2012.

Two large hospitals give Hillcrest a medical side. Scripps Mercy Hospital is a private Catholic hospital founded in 1890, the oldest hospital in San Diego County. That year the Sisters of Mercy opened a five-bed dispensary called St. Joseph's in downtown San Diego. A three-story hospital called St. Joseph's Sanitarium replaced it in Hillcrest in 1891, and in 1921 the hospital became the first one west of the Mississippi River accredited by the American College of Surgeons.

The current building went up in 1925 as Mercy Hospital. It joined Scripps Health in 1995 and stayed Catholic. In 2004 the hospital's two campuses were combined at Hillcrest. The Hillcrest campus is home to one of four regional Level I Trauma Centers and receives more than 2,100 trauma patients each year.

The other is Hillcrest Medical Center at UC San Diego Health, a teaching hospital that was once called UC San Diego Medical Center, Hillcrest. Medical care here goes back to 1904, when patients from the Poor Farm in Mission Valley moved to the new San Diego County Hospital. The eleven-story, 623-bed hospital opened in 1963, and control passed to UCSD in 1966. The Regional Burn Center opened in 1973 and the Regional Trauma Center in 1976. The University of California system bought the hospital from the county in 1981 for $17 million.

Today the 390-bed hospital stands on a 56-acre campus of 37 buildings. Its emergency department serves San Diego County and Imperial County, and it has the first academic Level I Trauma Center in the region. The Regional Burn Center is the only burn center serving San Diego County, Camp Pendleton and Imperial Valley, and it treated patients from the 2007 San Diego wildfires. The stroke center was one of the first five Joint Commission-certified comprehensive stroke centers in the country. UC San Diego Health says its plans include a long-term presence in Hillcrest past 2030.

Hillcrest is walkable, with cafes, restaurants and shops close to the main residential pockets. Bus lines 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, 120 and 215 from the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System serve it. State Route 163 reaches it at the University Avenue, Washington Street and Robinson Avenue exits, and runs between downtown to the south and Mission Valley to the north.

Parking has a bit of a story. Hillcrest has dozens of public garages, lots and street spots. A community parking district covering Hillcrest, Mission Hills and Bankers Hill was created in 1997 and run first by a nonprofit called the Uptown Partnership, which received about $700,000 a year from area meters. After 12 years and $2.5 million it had created 50 new parking spaces, drew criticism from a county Grand Jury, and withdrew in 2010. The district was revived in 2012 with a new board. In 2013 it launched a free trolley running along main streets on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, and a website called AccessHillcrest helps people find parking, share rides or bike.