Spanish missions, a zoo built from war surplus, and the birthplace of California
San Diego is where California starts, at least officially — it's the site of the first Spanish mission and presidio in the state, founded in 1769 by Junípero Serra, more than two decades before anyone settled Los Angeles or San Francisco. Balboa Park, now home to the San Diego Zoo, traces back to a 1915 exposition whose Spanish Colonial buildings were meant to be temporary and somehow never left. The zoo itself grew out of leftover animals from that same exposition's amusement zone, kept on after the fair closed rather than shipped elsewhere. Point Loma's lighthouse and naval history reflect a city shaped as much by the Navy as by tourism, and the harbor still hosts one of the largest concentrations of military ships on the West Coast. Downtown's Gaslamp Quarter, once a Wild West red-light district, was nearly demolished for parking lots in the 1970s before a preservation push turned it into the city's densest strip of restored Victorian storefronts.
