San Diego

The Kumeyaay lived around San Diego Bay for centuries before Europeans arrived; their village of Kosa'aay stood where Old Town is today. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the bay for Spain in 1542, and in 1602 Sebastián Vizcaíno named it after the Spanish saint Didacus, San Diego de Alcalá. In 1769 Gaspar de Portolà established the Presidio on a hill above the San Diego River and the Franciscans founded the mission — the first European settlement in what is now California, which is why San Diego calls itself the Birthplace of California. The Kumeyaay revolted in 1775, and the mission moved six miles up the river.

Under Mexico the town grew up below Presidio Hill, but it shrank in the 1830s amid conflict with the Kumeyaay. After the Mexican–American War the border was drawn just south of the bay. In 1850 William Heath Davis began a 'New San Diego' on the waterfront, but it grew slowly; in the late 1860s Alonzo Horton promoted a bayside 'New Town', which soon eclipsed the original settlement, known to this day as Old Town. In 1916 the Stingaree district, home to the first Chinatown, was cleared to make way for what became the Gaslamp Quarter.

The Panama–California Exposition of 1915–16 left Balboa Park many of its Spanish-style buildings and the animals that started the zoo. The Navy arrived in 1901 and grew enormously; by the Second World War San Diego was a major military and defence-manufacturing centre, and the tuna fleet, crewed by immigrant fishermen from Japan, the Azores and Italy, supplied the city's canneries. Defence cuts after the Cold War hit hard, but downtown revived from the 1980s with the Gaslamp Quarter, the convention centre and, in 2004, Petco Park, while biotechnology and Qualcomm reshaped the economy.

San Diego's identity is tied to the ocean, the military and the border. The Navy and Marine Corps have been part of the city for more than a century, and many of the Pacific Fleet's ships are based in the bay. The city shares a 15-mile border with Mexico, and the San Diego–Tijuana region is one of the largest cross-border metropolitan areas in the Western Hemisphere; Spanish is heard everywhere, and Mexican culture shapes food, music and festivals.

Balboa Park is the cultural heart of the city, with the San Diego Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, the Museum of Us, the Air & Space Museum and the Old Globe Theatre, which stages about fifteen productions a year. Each summer Comic-Con fills the convention centre with more than 130,000 fans, and the city's craft breweries, which have earned it the nickname 'America's Craft Beer Capital', are celebrated each November in San Diego Beer Week.

Surfing and beach life are central to local culture, from Pacific Beach to La Jolla. Sport means the Padres baseball team at Petco Park, San Diego FC in Major League Soccer and San Diego Wave FC in the women's league.

More than 1.4 million people live in the city, and the San Diego area has more than 3.3 million residents. The city sprawls over mesas and canyons from the border to the north county, with San Ysidro and Otay Mesa cut off from the rest of the city by Chula Vista and National City.

The largest parts of the economy are the military and defence, tourism, international trade and research. San Diego hosts one of the largest naval fleets in the world, and about one in twenty civilian jobs in the county is military-related. The University of California San Diego and research institutes in La Jolla and Sorrento Valley have built one of the country's largest biotechnology clusters, and Qualcomm, founded here, is one of the city's largest private employers. Cross-border trade passes through the commercial crossing at Otay Mesa.

Housing is very expensive, and homelessness is a visible problem, though reports in 2023 noted a decline in the downtown core. Life is outdoors much of the year — surfing before work, walks on the beaches and bay paths, and weekends in Balboa Park — and wildfire in the chaparral of the inland hills is a recurring threat in dry, windy weather.

San Diego's food is shaped by the border. Fish tacos, which originated in Baja California — grilled or fried fish in a tortilla with cabbage and a creamy sauce — are sold across the city, and the California burrito, carne asada and French fries wrapped in a flour tortilla, is a staple of the local taco shops. Mixing French fries with traditional burrito fillings, it is an example of fusion border food. Old Town has Mexican restaurants around its historic park.

The fishing fleets that once filled the bay left their mark too: Little Italy, built by Italian tuna fishermen, is now one of the city's main restaurant districts, and seafood is plentiful along the waterfront. Point Loma kept the Portuguese heritage of the Azorean fishing families.

Craft beer is San Diego's other claim to fame. The region has a very large number of breweries, many of them in North Park, and beer tours draw visitors from around the country.