San Diego County CA Archives History - Books .....The Bay Region 1888
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 20, 2006, 6:58 pm

Book Title: The City And County Of San Diego

CHAPTER VII.
THE BAY REGION.

   SAN DIEGO BAY is the only harbor in California south of San Francisco. There
are several roadsteads, fondly called harbors by the dwellers on the shore,
where a vessel may anchor in fair weather, and discharge by lighters. But by the
word harbor, the great world means a place that a vessel can enter with safety,
tie up at a wharf and discharge her crew. A place where vessels have to hold
themselves ready to put to sea at any moment for safety cannot be made a harbor
by any stretch of fancy or Government funds. San Diego bar has twenty-three feet
of water at low tide, and is so smooth that the largest vessels pass over it
during the heaviest storms ever known. During the great storm of February, 1878,
when the wind reached the highest point ever registered by the signal service at
San Diego, the Hassler, a large steamer of the United States coast survey, lay
during the whole storm directly upon the bar, taking soundings and surveying the
harbor. During that same storm the coast line steamer Orizaba had to pass every
stopping-place between San Diego and San Francisco, and lie off San Francisco
three days before daring to cross its bar. At San Diego is often seen what is a
rare sight at any seaport in the world, a full-rigged ship of the largest size
entering under full sail, sailing all the way up the channel, turning around and
sailing up to the wharf—all done without a harbor pilot or steam tug. And this
is done too by foreign vessels, whose pilots have never before entered the bay.

   The bay of San Diego is about twelve miles long, and from one mile to two and
a half miles broad, with abundance of deep water for thousands of vessels. It
has miles of good wharfage front, completely landlocked and sheltered. The
report of the United States coast survey furnishes the most incontestable proof
of all these facts, as well as much other interesting information about it. It
is certain to be not only the principal port of Southern California, but will be
the Pacific port of a line of steamers to China, Australia and Japan, being some
five hundred miles nearer than San Francisco. The completion of any of the canal
or ship railroad schemes on the Isthmus will also be certain to secure it a
large commerce.

   Surrounding this bay are miles upon miles of slope and table-land of fine
quality lying in almost perfect shape for town sites, villas, and ornamental
places, where beauty and profit may go hand in hand.

   Next in size to San Diego is National City, four miles farther up the bay,
also in the full enjoyment of the new prosperity. It, too, has a long and
excellent water front, with plenty of wharf room in deep water. It is the
terminus of the railroad, and has all the railroad shops, stores, and general
offices. Its present population, including suburban places on the adjoining
slopes and in the neighboring valleys, is about three thousand, which is rapidly
increasing. It is situated upon the National Rancho, one of the most valuable
ranchos in the county. To the wise liberality of the owners in giving about
seventeen thousand acres of the choicest part of this tract to the railroad, San
Diego County is indebted for getting- it much sooner than it would otherwise
have come. From the National Rancho have come most of the choicest products,
that have shown what the county can do; the lemons that have captured all the
premiums at the fairs of Riverside and Los Angeles; the oranges that took the
premiums at New Orleans over the best of Florida; while its raisins, olives, and
deciduous fruits are surpassed by none in the State.

   The area of choice land surrounding National City, sweeps around the
southeast side of the bay to the Mexican line in almost unbroken slope toward
the water, terminating on the east in the high rolling Otay mesa, containing
some five thousand acres of fine land; on the south in the rich valley of the
Tia Juana River, and on the ocean side in a large alluvial tract of rich, warm
soil, forming the upper end of the peninsula that forms the bay, part of which
is now known as Coronado Heights. On this are also situated the new towns of
Oneonta and South San Diego. This peninsula then runs northward for several
miles in a long strip that shuts out the sea completely. Opposite the city of
San Diego, it widens out into a large tract of about twenty-five hundred acres,
almost divided by an arm of the bay called Spanish Bight. Upon the southern
division of this, containing some eleven hundred acres, and over a mile in its
narrowest diameter, a remarkable improvement is now almost complete. Within two
years, nearly a million and 'a half of dollars have been expended in preparing
this for residence. The whole has been cleared of the native vegetation, laid
out and mapped, and water piped across the bay. A large steam ferry connects it
with the main-land; a steam motor road carries the. visitor across it in a few
moments, where bath-houses are so arranged that he may bathe winter or summer,
either in the surf or the bay, at his pleasure. A $1,000,000 hotel, first-class
in every respect, and lighted by electricity, has just been built, waterworks
and a perfect system of small pipe sewers are complete, everything needed for
comfort or convenience, for either resident or traveler, is being provided as
fast as money can do it; and Coronado Beach will soon be known as the most
remarkable watering-place in America, if not in the world. There have been
$2,600,000 worth of lots sold here within a year.

   The high promontory on the north, known as Point Loma, runs out into the sea,
sheltering the bay from the western winds, has abundance of good land upon its
slopes and top, but is as yet but slightly settled, though a town called
Roseville has been laid out in a very attractive and sheltered portion of it.
When water is piped to it, and the street railroad now in progress reaches it,
the southern slopes of this promontory will make fine residence property and be
in high demand. Just beyond where Point Loma joins the main-land, lies Old Town.
From here the land widens and slopes more gently away from the bay until it
spreads out into San Diego proper.

   Old Town is now connected with San Diego by a steam motor railroad, which
will be extended to Roseville and along the north shore of the bay. This will
make a continuous line of horse and steam motor railroad around the bay. Within
some twelve miles of the bay, on the north, south, and east, there are fully one
hundred thousand acres of arable table-land or mesa, most of which will in a few
years be irrigated in the ways hereinafter mentioned. A little beyond Old Town
is the new and beautiful suburb known as Pacific Beach, with the new villa sites
of Morena lying midway between. Pacific Beach is in the hands of a company bent
on making it rival even Coronado. A stupendous hotel, a fine college, electric
lights, bath-houses, street railroads, and all else needed to make it
attractive, are under way to be completed as fast as money can complete them. A
few miles farther up the shore is La Jolla Park, a very picturesque spot. And on
the western slope of the northern side of Point Loma lies Ocean Beach, also a
new and attractive watering-place.

   From all the shores and table-lands around the bay, a wide and varied
prospect opens upon one, but the best is from the highlands of Point Loma back
of Roseville. There the great ocean, its smooth face unmarred except by the
high, rocky ridges of the Coronado Islands, thirty miles away, seems almost to
embrace one, stretching so far and so vast, north, south, and west, with the
bright waters of False Bay running around one on the north, and San Diego Bay
reaching far inland on the south. For miles the placid face of San Diego Bay
lies shining in the bright sunlight, broken here and there by a wharf, ship, or
sail-boat, the plunge of the pelican or rolling of porpoises. Along the inner
shore lie the two cities, fast spreading toward one another in a line of houses,
and far away in the south can be seen the line of settlements in the Otay and
Tia Juana Valleys. Over the table-lands that slope from the bay, chains of lofty
hills rise tier after tier, looking down upon the vast ocean up to the high,
pine-clad lines of the distant mountains that bound the great desert. High,
rocky spurs studded with bowlders, towering peaks of bare gray granite, soft,
grassy slopes and timbered highlands roll away skyward into lofty ridges clad in
cedar and oak. On the south, far away into Mexico, the whole dissolves in a hazy
mist from which rise in long blue waves the outlines of its high mountains and
table-lands. On the north, over one hundred miles away, lie the great, snowy
tops of the San Bernardino Mountains, and a little to the east of them the
yellow sides of Palomar swell a mile skyward into a long blue line of timber.
And over it all lies an almost eternal sunshine, unbroken often for weeks by the
faintest cloud, and over it ever plays a gentle breeze that never fails to fin
one, yet never loses its temper.


Additional Comments:
From:

THE
CITY AND COUNTY
OF
SAN DIEGO.
ILLUSTRATED,
AND CONTAINING
BI0GRAPHICAL SKETCHES
OF
PROMINENT MEN AND PIONEERS.

SAN DIEGO, CAL.
LEBERTHON & TAYLOR
1888


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