Lost History

Article by Allison Morgan: Update: Since this article was written the Villa Surf has been completely demolished.  Nothing remains in its memory. If you visit Sunset Cliffs Natural Park in Point Loma, you’ll notice four foundations for a series of small houses near the cliffs that no longer exist, but should never be forgotten. Native San Diegan Daniel Paul Dixon […]

About De Anza Cove De Anza Cove has sadly been demolished. The residents put up a grand fight, but the very slow death has come to an end. I read that it was be an expansion of Campland, which neighbored it.  Mayor Todd Gloria was there to watch the finally phase of demolition “praising the progress and said he looked […]

  About the Buena Vista Cemetery   This sadly isn’t the first time we’ve written about a cemetery being bulldozed over by the city.  Pioneer Park in Mission Hills, for instance, still has the bodies buried on the property, although the tombstones have long been removed.  What was once known as Calvary Cemetery is now a park for the community. […]

Lost History of Wonderland Park: Although Belmont Park has been open for almost a century at this point, it isn’t San Diego’s first amusement park. Nope, San Diego’s first amusement park was actually located in Ocean Beach and was named Wonderland Park. The 9.5 acre park opened its doors to the public in 1913 and sat between Voltaire & Abbott […]

Backstory of Lucy the White Deer The story of Lucy the White Deer and her eventual fate was thankfully before my time.  If I had known about her when I was alive I would have been devastated after learning how she died. It is still painful to hear regardless. We only lived a few exits down from Presidio Park when […]

About Spalding Park Since our original posting of the Rum Runners Cave there have been a number of comments seeking to prove it was a Prohibition-era booze smuggling center and others refuting that claim.  While it may never be known exactly what went on here during those years, the truth appears to be that what remains here are remnants of an amazing […]

About the Thrasher House It breaks my heart having to automatically add this spot to my Lost History section, but unfortunately by the time I visited this spot, the Thrasher House was on its way to demolition. This isn’t the only special back-yard spectacle I have visited in the past. This reminds of the Mud Huts in Alpine and the […]

Lost History It sounds like something straight out of a movie and in a sense it is: a man who could make it rain by mixing and burning various chemicals into the air.  His recipe was top-secret, only known by him and he took it to the grave.  This man was named Charles Hatfield and his story of being a […]

Article by David Johnson The mid-air collision of a small private plane and a Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) jetliner in the skies above North Park September morning in 1978 shattered San Diego like no single incident has before or since. Wars, terrorist attacks and political assassinations have had a far greater impact on the country as a whole, but this […]

Article by David Johnson: As this is being written in January of 2021, San Diego Stadium is being torn down in Mission Valley. In its infancy, it was a tangible symbol of San Diego’s evolution from a sleepy border town to an elite world-class city. But the fact that we could neither maintain it properly nor replace it with something […]

This article is part of our Lost History section where we cover significant sites in San Diego in which all physical evidence has been erased.  There are a handful of rumored cults in San Diego, some with legends that date back many decades. I find this topic to be fascinating and have actually taken it upon myself to visit a few […]

About the Alpine Mud Huts: Status: Destroyed I was fortunate enough to visit the mud huts back in 2015 before they were destroyed.  At the time, the owner Joseph “Isseppi” Diliberti, was battling the county over fire prevention citations which he couldn’t afford. Places like this are so far and few in between–especially in San Diego.  The mud huts were not just […]

In 1890, the city built a trolley railway going through University Heights. Once the railway was up and running, John D. Spreckles anticipated ways to encourage people to use it.  One of his incentives was to build a 5 acre botanical garden, free to all ticket-holding passengers.  The garden was built on the far west end of Adams ave & […]

Article by David Johnson: It had all of the elements of an unspeakably wrenching tragedy. An adorable three year old girl fell into a dry, abandoned well in a Los Angeles suburb and despite the heroic efforts of an army of frantic volunteers, died in the well medium of television, and for three awful days it captivated much of the […]

Until the late 80’s, Scripps Ranch was considered nothing more than an out-of-the-way town. Before the suburban boom, Scripps Ranch was originally a 400 acre ranch owned by E.W. Scripps whom later expanded it to 1,200 acres. Edward Scripps was was an American newspaper publisher and founder of The E. W. Scripps Company. In 1898, Scripps finished building a home […]