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The intriguing stories behind the names of some of San Diego’s most well-known landmarks

Behind dozens of San Diego County landmarks, there are distinct histories, anecdotes and folktales that help explain how the region as we know it came to be.

But how did these places get their names?

Here are the condensed details of how 10 San Diego attractions, buildings and monuments were named.

The stories behind the names are not always simple, and historians sometimes differ in their understandings of how a name was decided. There are also few landmarks that still maintain names from local Indigenous history, despite the existence of tribes such as the Kumeyaay Nation in the area for thousands of years before the names on this list were established.

This is the Union-Tribune’s second article on the naming history of San Diego County landmarks. Find the first one here.

Balboa Park

The park is named after Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Spanish conquistador and reportedly the first European to see the Pacific Ocean in 1513. While Balboa never landed in California, a number of places in Southern California hold his name.

Balboa Park, as one of the largest urban cultural parks in the country, may be his biggest namesake. Originally called City Park, preparations for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition prompted the name change, though accounts differ in how the park’s name was decided. In one well-known telling, city officials held a contest in 1910, encouraging residents to submit ideas for the park’s new title, with Balboa coming out on top.

Nancy Carol Carter, historian and former director of the Legal Research Center at the University of San Diego, however, published a piece in the Journal of San Diego History saying this story is false. Instead, she writes, after a four-month-long effort to determine a new name, the park commissioners landed on “Balboa” at a meeting in October 1910. Though community members and voices in local newspapers had their own opinions about what the new name should be, she says, ultimately the officials made the decision.

The “dove of peace came down and the sobriquet ‘Balboa’ was chosen from the hundreds that had been offered,” Carter wrote, with quotes from the San Diego Sun newspaper. “Horton, Silver Gate and Cabrillo were considered, but ‘someone suggested’ that the memory of Balboa, ‘who beat the real estate men to the Pacific Ocean,’ should be forever perpetuated.”

Cabrillo National Monument

Spanish conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and his crew had sailed north from Mexico on their vessel, the San Salvador, for just over 100 days in 1542 when they entered what is today the San Diego Bay. According to the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, the Kumeyaay people, who lived in the area for thousands of years, met Cabrillo and his crew upon their arrival. There are conflicting historical accounts on what occurred at this meeting, with some reports saying the interaction was violent, while others say it was not. Cabrillo reportedly didn’t stay long in the area before continuing north along the coast. Before he left the region, he claimed the land as Spain’s, though it was more than 200 years before Spain made an intentional effort to colonize the coastal regions of California, according to the Library of Congress.

While Cabrillo wouldn’t know it at the time (he died a few months later as the crew made their way up the coast), he would be hailed as the first European to set foot on California and chart its coast.

In 1913, U.S. President Woodrow Wilsoncq established the western end of Point Loma’s peninsula as the Cabrillo National Monument, where it overlooks the harbor that Cabrillo sailed into. In the 1940s, a 14-foot tall statue of Cabrillo was built, though after years of erosion, a Portuguese sculptor named Joas Chartes Almeida constructed a replica in 1988, which still stands today.

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

Point Loma has long been an important site for the armed forces, from its early days as a fort for the Spanish and Mexicans to its eventual establishment as the first U.S. military base in San Diego in the mid 1800s. Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery — and its home of Fort Rosecrans — were named after a U.S. general in 1899: William S. Rosecrans, or “Old Rosy,” as he was called by the Civil War soldiers who fought under his command. Rosecrans had a decades-long military career, though it came to an end a few years after he led Union forces into one of their largest defeats of the war at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, according to the National Parks Service.

In the years following his resignation from the army, Rosecrans became a U.S. diplomat in Mexico, a railroad businessman (though he wasn’t entirely successful in this arena, according to historians) and later a member of the U.S. Congress representing California. In 1867 in San Francisco, he met Alonzo Erastus Horton, an influential real estate developer, who had just returned from San Diego and spoke highly of it, according to the San Diego History Center.

The San Diego History Center reports that Rosecrans initially had ambitions to find a railroad route leading east from San Diego. Something about San Diego beyond its railroad prospects must have resonated with Rosecrans, though, because he purchased an entire block of business property near F and G streets and Fifth and Sixth avenues downtown, according to San Diego History Center archives.

Ultimately, Rosecrans didn’t spend much time in San Diego; after a short stint working as a U.S. representative in Mexico, he moved to San Francisco and then Los Angeles, selling his San Diego property along the way.

Old Scripps Building and Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier

Known today as the “Old Scripps Building,” the official name of the structure on the southwestern edge of the UC San Diego campus is the George H. Scripps Memorial Marine Biology Laboratory. George was the older brother of Ellen Browning Scripps, who funded the construction of the building, completed in 1910, and dedicated it to her brother, who died in 1900. It’s the original building at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, built in large part for William Ritter, a biologist who wanted a coastal laboratory to study marine science.

Nearby, visitors will find the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier, a place where one could see the “wonderful phosphorescence entertainments” of the sea, as Ellen once described in a letter to her half-sister. The ocean was a “source of beauty and mystery to her,” University of San Diego history professor Molly McClain writes in her book, “Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy.”

Ellen Scripps’ mark on Southern California can’t be understated: She founded the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla in 1924 as well as the women’s Scripps College in Claremont, California, and she was an active supporter of women’s right to vote. She donated to institutions like schools and museums — places where “everyday, ordinary people” could learn, McClain told the Union-Tribune.

By the end of her life, McClain explains, Ellen Scripps gave away all her money to institutions that were aimed at benefiting society.

“I hate the role of ‘philanthropist,’” she said in 1926. “What I do I do as an ‘investment.’ It is yours to accept the present situation as ordered by the Powers that be. It is mine to furnish the opportunity.”

The Giant Dipper in Belmont Park

The Giant Dipper roller coaster in Belmont Park is a National Historic Landmark and one of the most iconic attractions in San Diego, built in 1925. Before its construction, it was advertised to be the biggest roller coaster in the world. It never reached this level of fame and its name ultimately wasn’t that unique either; “big dipper” or “giant dipper” is simply an old-fashioned British term for a roller coaster.

Today, the San Diego coaster shares its name with the Giant Dipper ride on the beach boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California, though in the late 20th century, as the park underwent new management, it went through a few name changes, like “Roller Coaster” and then the “Earthquake,” before being changed back to the original name. According to City of San Diego archives, the roller coaster was intended to be demolished in 1979, but it landed a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, protecting its fate.

Businessman John D. Spreckels funded and developed Belmont Park in 1925, during the so-called golden age of roller coasters, though it was originally called the Mission Beach Amusement Center. In the 1950s, while under new ownership, the center’s name was changed to Belmont, reportedly to honor the Belmont Park in Montreal, Canada, a popular amusement park in the mid-1900s, according to Eric Young’s book, “The Giant Dipper, San Diego, California: A Pictorial History.”

“THE SMILE AND LAUGH HABIT IS CONTAGIOUS,” one San Diego Union advertisement exclaimed of the park in 1932. “You can get… smiles that precede joyous outburst of laughter–or those that linger after roars of glee heard on the ocean front, bay… or Giant Dipper.”

Hotel del Coronado

In 1602, the Spaniard Sebastián Vizcaíno and his crew peered inland from their ship and spotted four islands sprouting from the sea, just 17 miles off the Southern California coast. They called them Los Coronados, or “the crowned ones,” according to The Coronado Historical Association’s book, “Coronado: The Enchanted Island,” by Katherine Eitzen Carlin and Ray Brandes.

It would be hundreds of years later that the nearby peninsula, known today as Coronado, would take its name after the islands.

The book reports evidence of the presence of Native American tribes and other subsequent inhabitants in the peninsula’s history, and it is known to have been used for whaling, woodcutting and even as a gift for a Mexican land grant before being purchased in the mid 1880s by the businessmen who would give it the name it has today.

One of the businessmen, Elisha S. Babcock Jr., had reportedly sailed there from San Diego previously on a rabbit hunting expedition, where he dreamed of turning the peninsula into a resort, according to the Coronado Historical Association.

In 1886, San Diego newspapers and the peninsula’s new owners organized a naming contest for it, Carlin and Brandes write, with the name “Miramar” coming out on top. The choice was met with public outcry, so the owners “retreated,” instead borrowing the name Coronado from the nearby islands, “which seemed like a fitting title for what would become the Crown of Pacific resorts,” which they ultimately opened in 1888.

“Hotel del Coronado” directly translates to the “hotel of Coronado,” though Gina Petrone, the hotel’s historian, said there isn’t any documentation on the naming of the hotel itself. Since the Coronado Islands are owned by Mexico, though, she said she assumes the Spanish spelling is a homage to the area’s Spanish history.

The Hotel del Coronado, whose visitors over the years have included multiple presidents, Marilyn Monroe and Brad Pitt, has also been called the Lady by the Sea, according to an article in the Journal of San Diego History from 1966. Larry Lawrence, the hotel’s owner at the time, said rather comically of the hotel: “It’s like having a love affair with a beautiful woman. Sometimes late at night, after a hard day, I’ll just roam through the halls. I feel like I’m having a date with my best girl.”

Marston House

The Marston House, built in the early 20th century, was the family home of George Marston, a San Diego community leader, philanthropist and business owner. The final cost to construct the home was $20,000, the San Diego Union reported in 1906, calling it “one of the handsome residences completed during the past year.”

Marston wore many hats during his time in San Diego: He had a strong interest in urban planning, helping to preserve Presidio Park and fostering the development of Balboa Park and the waterfront. He also helped launch the local YMCA chapter and donated funds and resources to start Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. He had a vision for more green spaces in the city that even led his opponent to call him “Geranium George” during his run for San Diego mayor in 1917.

Visitors today can tour the 8,500 square foot Marston House, which also includes a five-acre yard with lawns and gardens, located on the western side of Balboa Park near Bankers Hill.

Mount Soledad National Veterans Memorial

Mount Soledad, the 822-foot tall mountain overlooking La Jolla, has been home to a national veterans memorial since 1954. The word “soledad,” which means “solitude” in Spanish, is fitting for such a place, though how or when the peak got its name isn’t entirely clear.

Rick Kennedy, a history professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, says it’s possible that the peak was named somewhere between the 1880s and early years of the 1900s.

“There was a romanticism of the Spanish before the 1900s and in the 1880s, but then there was a real sweep of Spanish romanticism in the 19-teens, 20s and 30s,” Kennedy says. “After 1912 or so, when they became committed to Balboa Park and finishing the Panama Canal, there was huge general belief that we should really promote our Spanish-ness.”

Another history professor, David Miller from the University of San Diego, agrees that the name is likely to have come later in history, not from the era of Spanish colonialism. “I think the name is just sort of like San Diego: We have a lot of Spanish names, so they picked one that was appropriate to the idea of a cross being there,” he said.

Some historians have other theories, though. Leland Fetzer, in his book “San Diego County Place Names, A To Z,” wrote that the word came from the Spanish, who named it after a nearby valley, which they called La Soledad, that is today known as Sorrento Valley.

But the La Jolla Historical Society historian Carol Olten says that the Spanish likely named the mountain for its geographical location; “It’s pretty much a solitary mountain,” she says, referring to the way it’s one of the lone mountains overlooking La Jolla, which is a more isolated region of San Diego County.

Robinson-Rose House

The first half of this house’s name is credited to James W. Robinson, a lawyer and investor who built the house in 1853, according to California State Parks. The building, which was used as a residential home on the second story and rented to businesses on the first, featured an interesting design choice: the first floor was made out of adobe but plastered to look like wood, with the second story made out of wood but designed to look like adobe. In 1868, after Robinson died, his wife sold the home to their friend Louis Rose, the first Jewish resident in San Diego, according to historian Donald H. Harrison in his book “Louis Rose, San Diego’s First Jewish Settler and Entrepreneur.” Rose was instrumental in creating the city’s first Jewish cemetery and synagogue, according to San Diego History Center archives.

Along with the building in Old Town, Rose Canyon and Roseville, a neighborhood in Point Loma, can also thank Rose for their names. “Roses do not grow naturally in San Diego’s Rose Canyon, or along the associated Rose Creek — two locations named after Louis Rose, who established a ranch and tannery there,” Harrison wrote in the Journal of San Diego History.

The Robinson-Rose House that stands in Old Town today is not the original, which was torn down around 1900, but a replica built in 1989. Today, the house serves as the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park visitor center and holds additional information about the early days of San Diego.

Spreckels Organ Pavilion

John D. Spreckels is deeply rooted in San Diego history. Called an “economic survivor” whose “success and power were feared by some” by historian Iris Engstrand in her book, “San Diego: California’s Cornerstone,” Spreckels owned or invested in numerous businesses across the city, including the Hotel del Coronado and the San Diego Union and Tribune newspapers, and funded the San Diego & Arizona Railway Company.

The organ pavilion in Balboa Park is one of a few landmarks in the city bearing Spreckels’ name. He and his brother, Adolph, gave the organ and the building to the city in preparation for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. It cost $100,000, the San Diego Union reported that year.

In the deed of gift, the brothers wrote that the organ and its pavilion were intended for the “free use, benefit and enjoyment of the people.”