Point Loma

No permanent Kumeyaay settlements stood on Point Loma because there was no fresh water. The Kumeyaay probably kept a seasonal village they remembered as Totakamalam, and they visited Ocean Beach to harvest mussels, clams, abalone and lobsters. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo reached the peninsula on September 28, 1542, leading an expedition for the Spanish crown. He called San Diego Bay a very good enclosed port. Historians think he docked his flagship on the east shore, probably at Ballast Point. It was the first landing by a European in present-day California, which is why Point Loma has been called the place where California began.

More than 200 years passed before a permanent settlement was founded in 1769. Mission San Diego stood in the river valley, but its port was a bayside beach on Point Loma called La Playa. The La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail on the West Coast, ran from the mission and presidio to that beach, where ships anchored and unloaded by small boat. Part of the route is now Rosecrans Street. Richard Henry Dana Jr. wrote in Two Years Before the Mast about sailors in the 1830s who camped there, collected cattle hides for export and hunted jackrabbits in the hills. La Playa remained San Diego's port until New Town, now downtown, was established in the 1870s.

San Diego's long link with the U.S. military began here. The southern part of the peninsula was set aside for military use as early as 1852. The Army built coastal artillery batteries and named the area Fort Rosecrans. Ballast Point got its name from ships dumping ballast there, and Fort Guijarros was built there in 1797. A big Navy presence began in 1901 with the Navy Coaling Station. Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego was commissioned in 1921 and Naval Training Center San Diego in 1923. The training center closed in 1997. During World War II the entire southern part of the peninsula was closed to civilians.

In the late 1890's the Theosophists made Point Loma their home. After Helena Blavatsky died in 1891, her successor Katherine Tingley moved the society's headquarters from New York City to Lomaland, a hilltop campus above the ocean. It was an important source of music and culture for San Diego between 1900 and 1920. The society grew most of its own food and experimented with eucalyptus and avocado, which gave a formerly barren area its heavily wooded look. The site is now the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University.

In the 1920s a dirt airstrip called Dutch Flats lay in what is now the Midway neighborhood. Charles Lindbergh first tested and flew his airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, there. It had been built in San Diego by the Ryan Aeronautical Company. A post office on the site carries several historic plaques about Dutch Flats and Lindbergh. Sea breezes and a long ridge also made the peninsula a known gliding site from 1929 to 1935. William Hawley Bowlus built the first American sailplane, and in 1930 his student Jack C. Barstow soared over Point Loma for over 15 hours. The National Soaring Museum named Point Loma a National Landmark of Soaring in 1996.

The best known landmark is the Old Point Loma lighthouse, sometimes used to stand for all of San Diego. It is occasionally called the Old Spanish Lighthouse, but it was built after California joined the United States. The small two-story tower was completed in 1854 and first lit on November 15, 1855. Its spot, 422 feet (129 m) above sea level, looked ideal and turned out poor, because fog and cloud often hid the beam. A new lighthouse closer to sea level replaced it on March 23, 1891. The old one sits inside Cabrillo National Monument and is partly open to the public.

Cabrillo National Monument sits at the tip of the peninsula and honors the explorer who first saw San Diego Bay. From more than 400 feet above the water it looks west over the Pacific and east over San Diego Bay, Coronado, the airport and downtown. The monument has a tidepool area on the ocean side and a whale overlook for the winter gray whale migration. The Bayside Trail runs through coastal scrubland, and sea lions are often seen on the buoys below. Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery and the USS Bennington Monument are nearby.

On the west side, sandstone cliffs called Sunset Cliffs face the ocean. They belong to the Point Loma Formation, which holds fossils from the Late Cretaceous period, about 75 million years ago, including dinosaur fossils. Few sites in California contain dinosaur fossils. Most of the ocean frontage is Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. The cliffs are unstable and dangerous, and a woman died in a fall in December 2008. Besides the lighthouse, five other places in Point Loma are on the National Register of Historic Places: Cabrillo National Monument, Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Historic District, Naval Training Center San Diego and Rosecroft.

Most Point Loma neighborhoods are single-family homes. Point Loma Village is the commercial and retail center, with hundreds of jacaranda trees along its streets. Liberty Station, on the former Naval Training Center, is the newest commercial area. The Midway district at the north end, beside the river and the I-5 and I-8 freeways, is mostly commercial and industrial. A causeway links the Village to Shelter Island, which is really a former sandbank that was built up with dredged material and developed in the 1950s. It holds hotels, restaurants, marinas and public parkland under the Port of San Diego.

La Playa is a bayside residential area, north of the original beach, and includes some of the most expensive homes in San Diego. Roseville, named for the pioneer Louis Rose, is the oldest settled part of the peninsula. It was once a separate town, and many Portuguese fishermen and boat owners settled there, which earned it the nickname Tunaville. Above it is Fleetridge. Loma Portal lies under the takeoff path of San Diego International Airport, home to the Point Loma Pause, when conversation stops for passing planes. Its east-west streets are named for authors in alphabetical order, from Addison to Zola. The southern third of the peninsula is entirely federal land.

The main economic engines are military facilities, neighborhood retail and marine recreation. The Navy controls approximately 1,800 acres (730 ha) of Point Loma, and it provides jobs for about 48,000 military personnel and civilians. Naval Base Point Loma is home to Submarine Squadron 11 and the Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command. The Marine Corps' Recruit Training Depot is here too. On the bay side, three yacht clubs, including the San Diego Yacht Club, which was home to the America's Cup from 1988 to 1995, share the water with half a dozen small-boat marinas. Point Loma has the biggest sport fishing fleet in Southern California.

Liberty Station is a 361-acre (1.46 km2) mixed-use redevelopment with homes, offices, shops, schools and arts districts. It includes a 9-hole golf course, a 46-acre (190,000 m2) waterfront park and a 100-acre (0.40 km2) historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. The San Diego Sports Arena and the SOMA concert venue are in Midway. Annual events include the Day at the Docks festival in April, the Cabrillo Festival in the fall, concerts on Shelter Island from June through September, and a Parade of Lights with decorated boats in December. Festa do Espirito Santo, put on by the Portuguese community every year since 1910, is San Diego's oldest ethnic tradition.

Interstate 8 follows the northern edge of the peninsula and ends a few blocks from the ocean. Rosecrans Street serves the bay side, and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard serves the ocean side. Both run parallel to each other and to Catalina Boulevard on the crest of the hill. Streets near the coast form a rough grid. In the hilly middle the grid breaks down, and some streets are cut into pieces by canyons. Bus service is slim, with Route 28 on Rosecrans Street and Route 35 to Ocean Beach linking to the Trolley station in Old Town.

Public schools belong to the San Diego Unified School District and include Point Loma High School, two middle schools and seven elementary schools. A public charter campus in Liberty Station, known as High Tech High, covers three high schools, two middle schools and two elementary schools. Point Loma Nazarene University is a Christian liberal arts college, and a branch campus of the San Diego Community College District is also here. The James Edgar and Jean Jessop Hervey Public Library opened in 2003 at 3701 Voltaire Street, with a nautical design and an operating periscope salvaged from a U.S. Navy submarine.