Timeline: History of Downtown San Diego

Key:
Residential Development
Infrastructure
Business & Commerce
Community Resources

1850 - Pantoja Park was created by William Heath Davis

1868 - The 1,400 acre "City Park" was founded (Balboa Park)

1874 - The St. Joseph Cathedral Parish community was founded

1880 -City of San Diego population is 2,637. San Diego County's population is 4951.

1881 - San Diego Gas & Electric Company began

1882 - Russ School opens.

1882 - The San Diego Public Library was established in rented space in a bank

May, 1882 - San Diego Telephone Company begins operation.

1882 - The San Diego Free Reading Room Association opens San Diego’s first public library.

1885 - The Tivoli Bar and Grill, situated at 505 Sixth Ave. in the Gaslamp Quarter, is the oldest bar in San
Diego, California

1886- Superb climate and fertile soil

March 1886 - The first electric plant in San Diego had been installed by the Jenney Electric Company and had begun
operating

July 1886 - San Diego Street Car Company, opened a single line with cars drawn by two mules or horses.

1886 - German immigrant Peter Mayerhofer created the exquisite, elaborate Italianate Victorian Grand Horton
Hotel, which opened in 1886

1887 - Railroad rate war leads to population boom and land stampede. San Diego’s Victorian Santa Fe railway station
opens downtown, built by the California Southern Railroad.
1888 - Trolley lines began operating over 37 miles of track.

1902 - First Carnegie library in California was made

1910- One of the oldest and most historic hotels in downtown San Diego

1928 - The city funded the construction of a two-runway municipal airport. San Diego International Airport.

1940 - Census gives San Diego City a population of 203,321 and the County, 289,348.

1941 -Naval bases in San Diego in swift expansion, with rise of war in Europe.

1942 - Vessels of San Diego’s tuna fleet volunteered by owners for wartime duty in Pacific.

1943 - San Diego City’s population set at 390,000, not including military personnel, and in the County,
500,000.

June 1944 - The San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) was created by an act of the State Legislature.

1949 - Tahiti Felix" Lynch is the one who start the business The Horton Grand Hotel

1952 - Carnegie library was demolished in to make way for a new Central Library

1954 - The new Central Library at 820 E Street completed.

1955 -Bonds voted for construction of new Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal.

1959 San Diego’s City’s population estimated to be 554,000.

1963 - The Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant started

1965 San Diego became the sixteenth largest city in the United States.

1967 -A modified General Plan as a guide for the growth of San Diego approved after it had been defeated two years
before.

1970 San Diego became the fourteenth largest city in the United States with a population of 696,769. County
population reaches 1,357,854.

2013 - PATH joined San Diego's efforts to end homelessness