San Diego City
San Diego City Hall is located at 202 C Street, San Diego, CA 92101.
Phone: 619‑533‑6387.
Photo: John R. and Florence Porterfield Beardsley House, circa 1933, located at 3130 Shadowlawn Street, San Diego. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Photographed by User:Visitor7 (own work), 2011, [cc‑3.0], via Wikimedia Commons, accessed December, 2021.
Beginnings [1]
Prehistoric Period (8500 BC to AD 1769)
Neighborhoods
- Native American people lived throughout San Diego continuously
- Subsistence changed from more nomadic hunting to a focus on coastal marine and inland food sources with native plant gathering to a semi-sedentary lifestyle with limited horticulture
- Significant time markers include changes in stone tools, mortuary practices, and the introduction of pottery
- Spanish exploration begins
Spanish Period (1769 to 1821)
- Arrival of Spanish missionaries and explorers
- Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcala established
- Spanish occupation and mission system profoundly changed lives of the Kumeyaay people
- Early house lots and garden plots in what would become Old Town
Mexican Period (1821 to 1846)
- Mexico wins independence from Spain and San Diego becomes part of the Mexican Republic
- Rancho system of extensive land grants to individuals
- Secularization of the San Diego Mission
- Mexico granted San Diego official pueblo (town) status
- Native American population continued to decline
American Development (1846-Present)
- Americans assumed formal control under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848
- William Heath Davis founded the earliest American development of "New Town" in 1850
- Alonzo Horton arrived in 1867 and helped San Diego develop into an active American town
- Expansion of trade brought an increase in the availability of building material
- Active African-American and Chinese communities lived and worked downtown
- Urban growth spurred by industrial capitalism and land speculation and early private infrastructure investment
- Chinese, German, Swiss, Italian, Portuguese, and other immigrants owned businesses and worked throughout San Diego, as do their descendants today
- City of San Diego General Plan,Historic Preservation Element, March, 2008, www.sandiego.gov, accessed October, 2011.