page_title: Point Loma, San Diego
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Point Loma, San Diego / History
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Boundary Survey, 1850, of the San Diego area.
context_page_description: Point Loma is a seaside community within the city of San Diego, California. Geographically it is a hilly peninsula that is bordered on the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, the east by the San Diego Bay and Old Town, and the north by the San Diego River. Together with the Silver Strand / Coronado peninsula, the Point Loma peninsula defines San Diego Bay and separates it from the Pacific Ocean. The term "Point Loma" is used to describe both the neighborhood and the peninsula.
  Point Loma has an estimated population of 47,981, according to the 2010 Census. The Peninsula Planning Area, which includes most of Point Loma, comprises approximately 4,400 acres.
  Point Loma is historically important as the landing place of the first European expedition to come ashore in present-day California. The peninsula has been described as "where California began". Today, Point Loma houses two major military bases, a national cemetery, a national monument, and a university, in addition to residential and commercial areas.
context_section_description: Loma is the Spanish word for hill. The original Spanish name of the peninsula was La Punta de la Loma de San Diego, translated as Hill Point of San Diego. This was later anglicized to Point Loma. The original Kumeyaay name was "Amat Kunyily".
  There were no permanent indigenous settlements on Point Loma because of a lack of fresh water. Kumeyaay people did visit Ocean Beach periodically to harvest mussels, clams, abalone and lobsters.
  Point Loma was discovered by Europeans on September 28, 1542 when Portuguese navigator Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (João Rodrigues Cabrilho in Portuguese) departed from Mexico and led an expedition for the Spanish crown to explore the west coast of what is now the United States. Cabrillo described San Diego Bay as "a very good enclosed port". Historians believe he docked his flagship on Point Loma's east shore, probably at Ballast Point. This was the first landing by a European in present-day California, so that Point Loma has been described as "where California began".
  More than 200 years were to pass before a permanent European settlement was established in San Diego in 1769. Mission San Diego itself was in the San Diego River valley, but its port was a bayside beach in Point Loma called La Playa (Spanish for beach). The historic La Playa Trail, the oldest European trail on the West Coast, led from the Mission and Presidio to La Playa, where ships anchored and unloaded their cargoes via small boats. Part of the route became present-day Rosecrans Street. 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, accumulated cattle hides for export, and hunted for wood and jackrabbits in the hills of Point Loma. The beach at La Playa continued to serve as San Diego's "port" until the establishment of New Town (current downtown) in the 1870s.
  Ballast Point got its name from the practice of ships discarding their ballast there on arriving in San Diego Bay and taking on ballast as they left for the open ocean. Fort Guijarros was constructed at Ballast Point in 1797. Ballast Point and La Playa are now on the grounds of Naval Base Point Loma.
  The longtime association of San Diego with the U.S. military began in Point Loma. The southern portion of the Point Loma peninsula was set aside for military purposes as early as 1852. Over the next several decades the Army set up a series of coastal artillery batteries and named the area Fort Rosecrans. Significant U.S. Navy presence in San Diego began in 1901 with the establishment of the Navy Coaling Station in Point Loma. The Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego was commissioned in 1921 and the San Diego Naval Training Center in 1923, both in Point Loma; the Naval Training Center was closed in 1997. During World War II the entire southern portion of the peninsula was closed to civilians and used for military purposes, including a battery of coast artillery. Following the war the area retained multiple Navy commands, including a submarine base and a Naval Electronics Laboratory; they were eventually consolidated into Naval Base Point Loma. Other portions of Fort Rosecrans became Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery and Cabrillo National Monument.
  Following the death in 1891 of Helena Blavatsky its founder, Katherine Tingley moved the headquarters of the Theosophical Society to "Lomaland", a hilltop campus in Point Loma overlooking the ocean. The facility with its unusual architecture and even more unusual lifestyles became an important source of music and culture for residents of San Diego between 1900 and 1920. Producing most of its own food, the Society also experimented widely with planting trees and crops such as eucalyptus and avocado, giving that formerly barren part of Point Loma its current heavily wooded character. The Lomaland site is now the campus of Point Loma Nazarene University.
  During the 1920s there was a dirt airstrip known as Dutch Flats in what is now the Midway neighborhood of Point Loma. That is where Charles Lindbergh first tested and flew his airplane, The Spirit of St
caption: United States Boundary Survey of the San Diego area, 1850, showing the La Playa Trail from La Playa to Old San Diego and the Mission
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