La Playa, San Diego

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La Playa, San Diego
La Playa
Coordinates: 32°42′44″N117°14′43″W / 32.71222°N 117.24528°W / 32.71222; -117.24528
Country Flag of the United States.svg  United States of America
State Flag of California.svg  California
County Flag of San Diego County, California.png San Diego
City Flag of San Diego, California.svg San Diego
Reference no.61

La Playa (Spanish, 'the beach') is a bayfront neighborhood in the Point Loma community of San Diego, California. It is bordered by the San Diego Bay on the east, Naval Base Point Loma on the south, the Wooded Area neighborhood to the west and Point Loma Village/Roseville-Fleetridge to the north. [1] It lies across a channel from Shelter Island.

Contents

Description

The bayside residential area now called La Playa lies somewhat north of the original La Playa, where commercial and military ships anchored during the early days of the city. The La Playa neighborhood includes some of the most expensive homes in San Diego. The neighborhood is mostly residential and contains two yacht clubs, San Diego Yacht Club and Southwestern Yacht Club. Some bayfront homes have private piers for small boats.

Old La Playa

United States Boundary Survey of the San Diego, California area, 1850, showing the La Playa Trail from La Playa to Old San Diego and the Mission US Boundary Survey 1850.png
United States Boundary Survey of the San Diego, California area, 1850, showing the La Playa Trail from La Playa to Old San Diego and the Mission

The original area known as La Playa played an important role in the early history of San Diego. The first European to set foot in what is now California, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, came ashore in 1542 at La Playa, probably at a small rocky peninsula called Ballast Point. [2] When a permanent European settlement was established a few miles inland in 1769, La Playa served as the town's "harbor", actually an anchorage where cargo was loaded and unloaded via small boats. Goods were then transported to the settlement by land over the historic La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail on the West Coast. [3] The anchorage at La Playa continued to serve as San Diego’s main port until the establishment of New Town (current downtown) in the 1870s. [4]

In his book Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana Jr. describes how sailors in the 1830s camped on the beach at La Playa and hunted for wood and rabbits in the hills of Point Loma. The beach at La Playa became an informal town of up to 800 people during the Mexican years (1822–1846), centered on a dozen or so huge "hide houses" where cattle hides were processed and stored until they could be exported for sale. The hide houses were named for the Boston trading ships they served. The first and best known was the Brookline captained by James O. Locke, where the American flag was first raised over California (unofficially) in 1829. [5] The La Playa harbor hosted vessels from almost every maritime nation in the world during this period. [5]

The Old La Playa site was registered as California Historical Landmark #61 in 1932, [6] and designated as a historical landmark by the San Diego Historical Resources Board in 1970. [7]

The original La Playa landing place and Ballast Point are now on the grounds of Naval Base Point Loma. Nothing visible remains of the original sites, which are accessible to the public during the annual Cabrillo Festival [2] and to scholars for occasional archeological digs. A lighthouse stood on Ballast Point from 1890 to 1960; currently there is a simple automated light on the site. [8]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midway, San Diego</span> Community in San Diego, California

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunset Cliffs, San Diego</span> Community in San Diego County, California

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shelter Island, San Diego</span> Human-made peninsula in San Diego, California

Shelter Island is a neighborhood of Point Loma in San Diego, California, United States. It is actually not an island but is connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. It was originally a sandbank in San Diego Bay, visible only at low tide. It was built up into dry land using material dredged from the bay in 1934. It was developed in the 1950s and contains hotels, restaurants, marinas, and public parkland.

La Playa may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wooded Area, San Diego</span> Community in San Diego County, California

The Wooded Area is a neighborhood within the community of Point Loma, San Diego, California. It encompasses the hilltop area south of Talbot Street on both sides of Catalina Boulevard; the area west of Catalina is also referred to as the College Area. The Wooded Area borders Naval Base Point Loma to the south, La Playa to the east, Roseville-Fleetridge to the north, and Sunset Cliffs and Point Loma Nazarene University to the west. The boundaries of the neighborhood are not universally agreed upon, with different maps showing different borders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">La Playa Trail</span>

The La Playa Trail was a historic bayside trail in San Diego, connecting the settled inland areas to the commercial anchorage at Old La Playa on San Diego Bay. The La Playa Trail has been recognized as the oldest commercial trail in the Western United States. The trail was used during the Pre-Hispanic, Spanish, Mexican and American periods of San Diego history. Much of the length of the original trail corresponds to the current Rosecrans Street in the San Diego neighborhood of Point Loma. There are eight registered National Historic Districts and 70 identified historic sites along the trail, according to the La Playa Trail Association, which was formed in 2005 to recognize the historic nature of the trail and to honor the many different peoples who traveled along it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Point Loma Heights, San Diego</span> Neighborhood of San Diego in California, United States

Point Loma Heights is a neighborhood in Point Loma, San Diego, California. It is bounded by Froude Street on the west, Point Loma Avenue and Chatsworth Boulevard on the south, Nimitz Boulevard on the east and Midway Drive and the San Diego River on the north. Neighboring communities are Ocean Beach to the west, Sunset Cliffs and Roseville-Fleetridge to the south, Loma Portal to the east, and Midway and Mission Bay Park to the north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ballast Point Whaling Station</span> Historical Landmark in San Diego, California, United States

Ballast Point Whaling Station in San Diego, California in San Diego County, is a California Historical Landmark No. 50 listed on December 6, 1935. The Ballast Point Whaling Station was built in 1858 by Captain Miles A. Johnson his cousins, Henry and James A. Johnson and the twin Packard brothers, Alpheus and William, brothers. The Portuguese-American Johnsons, Alpheus and William came to San Diego from Massachusetts in 1856. The Ballast Point Whaling Station was on Ballast Point. The Whaling station processed whales to make whale oil. Whale oil was a very popular as in oil lamps it produced little smoke. Whale oil was also used in miner's headlamps, lighthouses, soaps, and candles, and as machinery lubricant. In 1869 the United States acquired the site for a quarantine station and built a lighthouse and later Fort Rosecrans, named after Major General William Rosecrans. Whaling operations at Ballast Point stopped in 1873. In 1946 the site became a United States Submarine Base. The site today is Naval Base Point Loma founded in 1959. A Ballast Point Whaling Station historic marker is located on the Navy Base. Before Ballast Point Whaling Station the site was the Spanish Fort Guijarros

References

  1. City of San Diego:Neighborhoods map Archived 2008-05-17 at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 Cabrillo Festival website
  3. Historic La Playa Trail Association website
  4. Engstrand, Iris Wilson, California’s Cornerstone, Sunbelt Publications, Inc., 2005, p. 80
  5. 1 2 Kyle, Douglas (6 September 2002). Historic Spots in California (5th ed.). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 339. ISBN   0-8047-4482-3 . Retrieved October 17, 2012.
  6. "La Playa". Office of Historic Preservation, California State Parks. Retrieved 2012-10-13.
  7. City of San Diego website.
  8. Roberts, Bruce; Jones, Ray (2005). Lighthouses of California: A Guidebook and Keepsake. Guilford, Connecticut: Globe Perquot Press. p. 15. ISBN   0-7627-3735-2.[ permanent dead link ]

32°42′44″N117°14′43″W / 32.71222°N 117.24528°W / 32.71222; -117.24528