California's sun-soaked birthplace
California starts here, at least officially. The first Spanish mission and presidio in the state were founded in 1769 by Junípero Serra, more than two decades before anyone settled Los Angeles or San Francisco. Balboa Park's Spanish Colonial buildings went up for a 1915 exposition, were meant to be temporary, and somehow never left. The San Diego Zoo grew out of leftover animals from that same fair's amusement zone, kept on after it closed rather than shipped elsewhere. The Navy shaped the city as much as tourism did, and the harbor still hosts one of the largest concentrations of military ships on the West Coast. The Gaslamp Quarter, once a Wild West red-light district, was nearly cleared for parking lots in the 1970s before preservationists turned it into the densest strip of restored Victorians downtown.
