When San Diego became an American city in the middle of the nineteenth century it assumed ownership of the lands that had formerly belonged to the Mexican pueblo of San Diego. These pueblo lands originally extended from National City to Sorrento Valley, and from the ocean to a line close to the present route of Interstate 805, but as the city grew most of this city property south of the San Diego River was sold to private buyers. By the first years of the twentieth century ‘pueblo lands’ had come to refer to the portion of the city lying north of the river. Only about 7000 acres remained under city ownership, most of it along the coast between La Jolla and Del Mar, and the city was still selling it off. In 1907 Pueblo Lot 1298, 160 acres, was sold to the Marine Biological Association for the establishment of a biological station, to be funded by Ellen Browning Scripps (the biological station eventually became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography). In 1908 Miss Scripps also purchased Pueblo Lot 1338, 130 acres in the Torrey pine groves near the northern edge of the pueblo lands (which eventually were included in Torrey Pines Park).

In 1908 San Diego voters passed an amendment to the city charter stating that all pueblo lands owned by the city lying north of the San Diego River were reserved from sale until the year 1930. The charter amendment also added a tax of 2 cents on each $100 of valuation of property for the purpose of improving these pueblo lands. One idea for improving these lands was to plant trees, and in November 1910 a pueblo forester was appointed and a site selected for a headquarters on the mesa about three miles north of La Jolla. The site was in Pueblo Lot 1311 and the council authorized construction of a one-story frame dwelling and a frame barn there for the forester’s use. A building permit for the dwelling, valued at $1600, was issued in December 1910. Other building permits for sheds and garages on Pueblo Lot 1311 followed in 1911 and 1912. An irrigation system was also installed.

The pueblo forester was Max Watson, and he explained to the San Diego Union that for years the pueblo lands had been idle, bringing no revenue to the city and its barren hills being anything but beautiful to the eye. He planned to plant a portion of the land with eucalyptus trees which would bring in revenue as well as being another step in the direction of making San Diego a city beautiful. He claimed that the eucalyptus was the one tree that could be grown successfully on this land and would produce hardwood of commercial value in a short time frame. It could also be grown in poor soil and on slopes too steep for plowing.

By the spring of 1911 Watson had set out about 40,000 trees and had also cleared a small acreage for growing hay for use on the farm. Later in the summer of 1911 a nursery was built for propagating trees for future plantings and work begun on building roads and clearing additional land. He reported that without any water other than rainfall the eucalyptus trees had grown to about eight feet after a year and to fourteen feet after eighteen months. About 200 more acres of trees were set out in 1912, many on hillsides and land not adapted for general agricultural purposes.

The land under Watson’s control became known as the pueblo farm, and in addition to its potential for generating revenue and improving the scenery it turned out that it could also serve as a temporary home and provide work for the homeless and unemployed. In the winter of 1911 – 1912 the Union reported that ‘derelicts of the highways’ who formed a pitiable broken line along Rose Canyon Road coming from Los Angeles, where work had failed them, climbed the hill to the pueblo farm house to plead for jobs. ‘These poor fellows catch gophers and make ‘mulligans’ of them, they are so hungry’, Max Watson told the Union. ‘We are feeding as many of them as we can out here but they come beyond our capacity’ (the Union explained that a mulligan is a stew of any kind of meat with any kind of vegetables). The council voted to provide a ‘field outfit’ for 100 men to be set up at the pueblo farm. The winter of 1911 – 1912 was also when the International Workers of the World staged a series of violent demonstrations in San Diego. City and county authorities responded by arresting scores of demonstrators and in March 1912 they visited the pueblo farm to select a location for a ‘stockade’ in which to confine the additional hordes which agitators of the IWW had promised to bring to San Diego.

The decision to house the homeless and feed the hungry at the pueblo farm was not universally popular; the police chief in particular was opposed to this ‘philanthropy’. The reputation of its workers was reflected in a Union editorial which criticized an article in the rival San Diego Sun as ‘written by persons who would be better employed on the pueblo farm’. However, conditions had improved enough by the summer of 1912 that the camp for unemployed workingmen was closed. Watson reported that four hundred men in all were employed over the winter for ten days each at 50 cents a day but they had all since got better jobs as businesses opened with the close of the winter season. The workers had cleared 140 acres thickly covered with brush, planted 200 acres with 150,000 trees and turned several hundred acres into fertile fields. In July 1913 San Diego’s mayor and members of the city council made an automobile trip to the pueblo farm to inspect development of the city’s ‘wild property’ north of the river. They were treated to a lunch of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, frijoles, pickled beets and cold slaw, all raised on the farm. Although no-one had anticipated the humanitarian mission of the pueblo farm, Watson wrote in 1913 that it had been his greatest challenge and became his greatest satisfaction.

Although the pueblo forester had been tasked with creating a forest on the barren or brush-covered pueblo lands, an area in the northern section of these lands was already forested with Torrey pine trees, a rare species that only grew at this location and on Santa Rosa Island. In 1914 Max Watson transplanted about 1000 young Torrey pines grown from seed at the pueblo farm nursery among the older trees with the idea of preserving the Torrey pine groves as a national monument. The Torrey pines had long been a popular tourist destination and a road to the pine groves from La Jolla had been established across the mesa. With the increase in the popularity of automobiles in the early twentieth century the road had been widened and the steep grades at either end of the mesa, the biological grade above the biological station (now La Jolla Shores Drive) and the Torrey pines grade above the Penasquitos lagoon, had also been improved. This road linked the route from San Diego through Pacific Beach to La Jolla and the state highway from the Los Angeles area which ended at Del Mar into a continuous ‘coast highway’ from San Diego to the north. Other roads led south from the mesa to La Jolla via ‘Pueblo Farm Canyon’ and to San Diego via Rose Canyon, north to Sorrento Valley and east to the Scripps’ Ranch at Miramar. Since the roads across the mesa crossed city pueblo land and the city was responsible for their construction and maintenance, much of the labor was provided by workers from the pueblo farm, including city prisoners and the unemployed. In the days before most roads were paved they were sprinkled regularly with water during the dry season to control dust, and in 1915 a reservoir with a capacity of 100,000 gallons was excavated by pueblo farm laborers (the reservoir is now the site of the National University campus).

By the end of 1915 the city council had concluded that road construction was a better use of money raised from the 2-cent property assessment for improving pueblo lands and decided to do away with the operation of the pueblo farm. Cultivation at the farm would be discontinued except for the harvest of the hay crop, which was used to feed the city’s teams. The buildings would be used as a camp for laborers building the Torrey Pines boulevard and other road projects on the pueblo lands, which all radiated from the pueblo farm. At the beginning of 1916 the pueblo farm, along with the departments of water, sewer, streets, harbor, city engineer and public buildings was consolidated into a single operating department presided over by a city manager. The positions of the former heads of its constituent departments, including the city forester, were eliminated. Max Watson continued to head the pueblo farm as a general foreman, but soon resigned and took a job out of town. His position as caretaker of the pueblo farm was taken over by Frank Sessions, brother of the well-known horticulturist Kate Sessions, who began his duties in January 1916. One of his first tasks was repairing damage to the roads leading down from the mesa to La Jolla which were washed out in the storms of January 1916 that had eroded roads and destroyed dams and bridges all over San Diego County (the ‘Hatfield flood’).

Events in the wider world were also destined to play a part in the future of the pueblo farm and San Diego’s pueblo lands. A war among European powers begun in 1914 had grown to involve much of the world and although the United States remained neutral until 1917 steps were taken to build up the military. As part of the military build-up the U.S. government petitioned San Diego’s city council in 1917 for a lease on a large tract of the pueblo lands to be used as a maneuver field for the thousands of marines to be stationed in and around San Diego. According to the Evening Tribune, the marines’ request was for 25 pueblo lots, practically all city lands north of Rose Canyon, extending from Rose Canyon to Torrey Pines Park and from the ocean to Sorrento Valley.  The marines’ maneuver field would be contiguous with the army’s Camp Kearny to the east and would be linked to it by the Miramar Road. The city had several pueblo lots for pasturage and four pueblo lots under cultivation and some buildings, and these properties were not to be used by the marines. The marines also agreed to not close any of the permanent highways through the lands and not to chop or damage any Torrey pines or other trees in the park. The marines did receive the lease and established a rifle range east of the pueblo farm buildings and south of the Miramar Road.

Road construction through the pueblo farm continued during 1918. In February the city manager announced that a new route for a paved highway from the Torrey Pines grade to the biological station had been decided on. From the biological grade it would follow the existing Camp Kearny road to the pueblo farm, then turn north to a new section of the Torrey Pines road, which would be paved. In December 1918 the news was that by January 1 perhaps automobile owners could travel into La Jolla from the north over a fine paved highway, as the city’s part of the work connecting the state highway at Torrey Pines with the paved biological grade was to be completed by then. In January 1919 the Southern California Highway Conditions column by a representative of the Automobile Club of Southern California described the Los Angeles Coast Route from San Diego:

go either by way of Ocean Beach or Old Town to the junction of Pacific Beach over good dirt road, thence follow through to La Jolla city, which is paved within its limits; thence a short stretch of dirt road to the foot of the Biological grade; thence pavement to the top of the grade. A short stretch through the Pueblo farm house for one-quarter of a mile will bring you to the new pavement on the mesa. From the mesa to Los Angeles the road is paved.

(The ‘junction of Pacific Beach’ was the intersection of Garnet Avenue and Cass Street, where the branches of the coast highway that ran east (via Old Town) and west (via Ocean Beach) of Mission Bay met before continuing north on Cass and Turquoise streets to La Jolla Boulevard)

Also in January 1919, the city council decided that since Superintendent Frank Sessions was doing the caretaker work and handling a lot of prisoners that the police supplied him with the pueblo farm should be placed under the control of the police department. Jail prisoners would be used as formerly and Superintendent Sessions would continue as caretaker temporarily. However, in April the council decided to take it back from the police and to authorize the city manager to resume charge of the city pueblo farm. The New Year’s 1920 review of the city in the San Diego Union reported that the pueblo farm, recently transferred to the operating department, had completed fall plowing of about 700 acres which was then being planted to wheat, oats and barley. These lands were soon to be made more valuable by irrigation from a water line from Del Mar to La Jolla. Since the city could not sell this land until 1930 it was planned to lease tracts for farming purposes.

In 1919 the city council had designated the pueblo farm as a site for a hog ranch to dispose of city garbage and in April 1920 the news was that its sows had presented the city with litters aggregating 60 baby pigs. The Union reported that there were about 100 young pigs at the farm and when they were grown to a weight of about 200 pounds the manager of operations would order them sold. As the hog ranch on the pueblo farm became established the canyon south of the farm came to be known as Hog Canyon. When work on widening and straightening the biological grade was undertaken in 1925 the first step was the preparation of a detour between La Jolla and the Torrey Pines mesa by widening and grading the road through Hog Canyon. In 1927 the city council agreed that Hog Canyon should be given the more respectable name of La Jolla Canyon; the Union reported that the councilmen took the view that the La Jolla Women’s club was right in demanding the change, as ‘hog’ was in no way adapted to La Jolla’s scenic beauty and aesthetic atmosphere. The new La Jolla Canyon highway proved to be popular with motorists who wanted to avoid the biological grade and it was also paved in 1928. In 1930 the La Jolla Canyon road, formerly the Hog Canyon road, was officially renamed Torrey Pines Road.

The highway across the Torrey Pines mesa and the Torrey Pines grade continued to be widened and improved as traffic increased on the coast highway and in 1930 arrangements were made to quarter the highway workers at the city pueblo farm to save the long trip back and forth to the city. The highway through Rose Canyon was paved in 1930 and state highway officials joined local dignitaries in December for opening ceremonies at the junction of the Rose Canyon highway with the Torrey Pines highway at the city pueblo farm. In 1931 a new route for the Torrey Pines grade was completed and the combined highway became known as the ‘million-dollar gateway to the north’. In 1935 it was officially renamed Pacific Highway.

Max Watson had resigned as pueblo forester in 1916 but in 1934 he visited the site of the pueblo farm where the Union reported that the eucalyptus trees that were mere sprigs when he superintended their planting then towered 20 to 30 feet high in groves and along the highway on the mesa from Torrey Pines Park to the biological station on the old La Jolla grade. ‘In those days, the mesa south of Torrey Pines was barren of trees. We planted more than 100 acres of them, not counting those planted along the highway’, he said.

The pueblo farm was seldom in the news after the 1930s. In December 1945 a truck loaded with ammunition from a navy ship in San Diego Bay to a weapons storage site near Fallbrook caught fire and exploded on US 101 about 400 feet south of the La Jolla Junction, where US 101, La Jolla Shores Drive, Torrey Pines Road and Miramar Road came together. The explosion was massive, heard as far away as Palomar Mountain, and caused widespread damage in the vicinity. Fortunately, the driver had escaped the truck before the fire reached the ammunition and had alerted nearby residents. No-one was killed but a number of people were injured by flying glass from shattered windows, including a resident of the city farm. A final news item appeared in 1951, when the city published a notice requesting sealed bids for houses for sale to be moved by purchaser. One of the houses was the Keeper’s House at Pueblo Farms on Pueblo Lot 1311.

The site of the pueblo farm has undergone tremendous changes in the intervening decades. In 1956 a majority of San Diego voters approved a proposition authorizing the city to sell 40 or 50 acres of pueblo land in Pueblo Lot 1311 southwest of La Jolla Junction for use by the University of California should the school expand its campus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 1958 the university administration began negotiations for the acquisition of a 65-acre site in Pueblo Lot 1311, west of US 101 and southwest of Miramar Road, for an Institute of Technology and Engineering. City voters also approved transfer of other pueblo lands if requested by the university regents and in 1960 the regents voted to acquire 482 acres of Torrey Pines mesa for development into a general university campus. The first land transfer would be 58 acres in Pueblo Lot 1311, between US 101 and La Jolla Shores Drive, south of Miramar Junction. The marine rifle range on leased pueblo land east of the pueblo farm had been acquired by the government in 1937 and named Camp Matthews in 1942, but by the 1960s activities there had become incompatible with the growing population in the vicinity and in 1964 it was closed and its property also transferred to what became the University of California, San Diego or UCSD.

In 1959 Max Watson cited the University of California’s decision to build a campus near La Jolla as justification for his efforts to create a forest on the pueblo lands 50 years before. By transforming the barren hills around La Jolla into a scenic shaded area, the trees had greatly raised the value and attractiveness of the area. ‘I don’t think the university would have agreed to locate a branch campus there if it hadn’t been for that. We’re cashing in on what we did 50 years ago. Everybody thought it was a flop then, but it hasn’t turned out that way at all.’ Although the former pueblo farm has been transformed into a modern university campus, with laboratories, classrooms, dormitories, and a spectacular library, the area is still dominated by its eucalyptus trees, many of them growing in the neat rows planted by the prisoners and other unfortunates that Watson welcomed over a century ago.

Pacific Pines is a subdivision in Pacific Beach surrounded by Reed Avenue, Pacific Beach Drive, and Jewell and Lamont streets. The four blocks that became Pacific Pines in 1926 had originally been included in the Pacific Beach Company’s 1887 subdivision map as residential blocks 283, 284, 305 and 306, surrounded by Reed and Hubbell avenues and Ninth and Eleventh streets and separated by Gassen Avenue and Tenth Street. However, few lots were sold south of Reed Avenue (or north of Alabama Avenue, now Diamond Street) and in 1892 an amended map of the Pacific Beach subdivision, Map 697, re-subdivided the area south of Reed by eliminating the east-west avenues (including Gassen and Hubbell) and most of the streets (including Ninth and Tenth). The former residential blocks (and the former avenues and streets) were consolidated into ‘acre lots’ of around 10 acres each, intended for agricultural purposes. Between Reed and what had been Hubbell avenues, the area between Ninth and Tenth streets (including what had been Ninth and Gassen Avenue) became Acre Lot 62; the area between Tenth and Eleventh (including Tenth and Gassen) became Acre Lot 61. Reed Avenue and Eleventh (now Lamont) Street continued to exist on map 697, which also transformed much of the area north of Alabama Avenue into acre lots.

Although property in these areas hadn’t sold well as residential lots, the acre lots proved to be extremely popular and thirteen were sold within the first few months after map 697 was recorded in January 1892. One of these was Acre Lot 61, sold to C. H. Raiter, a director of the First National Bank of Alexandria, Minnesota, who had spent the past winter in the vicinity. Mr. Raiter paid $1010, $100 an acre for the 10.1-acre parcel, in April 1892. When he left for home a few weeks later, the San Diego Union reported that he intended making this his home, in the winters at least, and had sent instruction to have the ten-acre tract put equally into oranges and lemons and to reserve a good building site. The property was to be piped, fenced and broken and planted as soon as possible, and Mr. Raiter intended coming back in the fall to superintend the construction of a residence.

The Raiters did return, in the winter at least, and in February 1894 Mrs. Anna Raiter recorded the deed for the adjoining Acre Lot 62, paying $940 for the 9.4 acre plot. However, Mr. Raiter never did superintend the construction of a residence; no improvements were ever assessed for acre lots 61 and 62 although the property was apparently planted to orange and lemon trees and ‘had 1000 little cypress plants put around it’. In 1895 the Union reported that Mr. Raiter was piping his entire tract and when the Raiters arrived for another winter visit in February 1897 and the Santa Fe train rolled him in sight of the beach, his orange and lemon grove with its surrounding hedge surpassed his most sanguine expectations and he (again) decided to make San Diego the home of his retirement.

Although the Raiters never built a retirement home they did continue to visit the San Diego area in the winter months. In February 1899 they were on the Union’s list of hotel arrivals at the Horton House downtown, and were said to be visiting with Sterling Honeycutt, then a leading lemon rancher and landowner in Pacific Beach. In April 1902 the Raiters were listed as arrivals at the Lakeside Hotel. It was during that trip to the San Diego area that they sold their Pacific Beach property to D. C. Campbell, who then sold it to Alexander and Mary McGillivray, wealthy absentee owners from Dickinson, North Dakota.

The amended Pacific Beach subdivision map of 1892, Map 697, had ended at the southern boundary of acre lots 61 and 62 but in 1898 the trustees of the Pacific Beach Company purchased the northern 61 feet of Pueblo Lot 1800, immediately south of and adjacent to these acre lots. Another five-acre parcel at the eastern edge of Pueblo Lot 1800, immediately south of this 61-foot strip and opposite Acre Lot 61, was purchased by Eliza Turner. In the remainder of Pueblo Lot 1800, the eastern half was subdivided as the Fortuna Park Addition in 1902 and the western half (except for a six-acre parcel in the southwestern corner) as Second Fortuna Park in 1903. The five-acre parcel opposite Acre Lot 61 was subdivided by Sterling Honeycutt in 1909 as Sterling Park.

Many acre lots had been developed as lemon ranches and lemon cultivation dominated the economy of Pacific Beach for the decade after 1892, but by the first years of the twentieth century the agricultural economy had begun to fade and real estate operators led by Folsom Bros. Co. were converting lemon groves into residential blocks by grading streets and building concrete curbs and sidewalks. One of the first areas to be developed was Sterling Honeycutt’s former lemon ranch between Garnet and Grand avenues and Jewell and Lamont streets, and one of the first streets to be graded, ‘curbed’ and ‘sidewalked’ was Kendall, the former Tenth Street (San Diego had decided in 1900 to require all street names to be unique and there were already ‘numbered’ streets downtown).

Grading of Kendall Street between Garnet and Grand was done in April 1907 and there were plans to grade it all the way to the bay to make a ‘splendid entrance’ to Fortuna Park, south of acre lots 61 and 62 and then controlled by Folsom Bros. Cement sidewalks were also planned for Kendall between Garnet and Grand, to be extended south to Reed Avenue and later all the way to Mission Bay. Since the 1892 subdivision map had eliminated Tenth Street south of Reed Avenue this route to Fortuna Park and Mission Bay was then private property, but in April 1907 the McGillivrays reconveyed the westerly 80 feet of Acre Lot 61 to the city for use as a street and public highway. In June 1907 the city ‘confirmed and accepted’ the conveyance and the property was ‘set apart as a part of Kendall Street’. This part of Kendall Street was graded shortly afterward, completing what the Union called a ‘main thoroughfare from hotel to bay’ (the Hotel Balboa, the former San Diego College of Letters building, was at the other end of Kendall, across from its intersection with Garnet Avenue).

However, the opening of a main thoroughfare through acre lots 61 and 62 did not lead to their development into residential blocks, at least not right away. Mr. McGillivray died in 1907 and although Mrs. McGillivray acquired additional property in Pacific Beach and Fortuna Park, she continued to live in North Dakota until her death in 1924 (the McGillivray House in Dickinson has since become famous as a ‘haunted house’). In 1925, acre lots 61 and 62 were acquired by Exchange Securities Corp, headed by J. H. Shreve, and then passed to Roy Snavely and Charles Brown, former realtors from Pasadena. Snavely and Brown also acquired the 61-foot strip south of acre lots 61 and 62. In May 1926 they announced that the 20-acre tract would be subdivided and would be known as Pacific Pines, since it was surrounded by a row of beautiful pine trees (presumably the ‘1000 little cypress plants’ put around the property in the 1890s). The Union reported that it was the aim of the owners to preserve every tree on the tract, and all streets would be improved with concrete paving, curbs and sidewalks. Spanish style construction would be suggested to everyone building a residence.

The subdivision map of Pacific Pines, Map 1917, was recorded in June 1926. Other former acre lots in Pacific Beach had already been returned to residential blocks, including the 1904 Subdivision of Acre Lots 57, 58, 59 and 60, Map 922, just to the east across Lamont Street. These earlier re-subdivisions generally recreated the blocks of the original 1887 map by replacing the streets eliminated in the 1892 revision, usually with the original pattern of 40 25- by 125-foot lots and a 20-foot alley, and with the original block numbers. At Pacific Pines, Kendall Street had already been replaced and Map 1917 also set aside the westerly 80 feet of Acre Lot 62 as Jewell Street. An extension of Oliver Avenue from Map 922 replaced the original Gassen Avenue and recreated the four blocks which had existed here before the acre lots. However, these blocks looked somewhat different than most others in Pacific Beach; 20 50-foot lots with depths that depended on the block. In blocks 1 and 2, between Reed and Oliver, the lots were all 134.5 feet deep. In block 3, south of Oliver and west of Kendall, lots 1-10 were 125 feet deep and lots 11-20 were about 130 feet deep. In block 4, east of Kendall, the lots were all about 120 feet deep. The alleys were 16 feet wide and Oliver Avenue was 50 feet wide, narrower than the standard 80-foot streets in Pacific Beach (including Reed Avenue and Kendall, Jewell and Lamont streets) and the 75-foot streets in Fortuna Park to the south. Another unusual feature of the Pacific Pines subdivision map was the wide curvature of the street corners that cut off a portion of corner lots.

The Pacific Pines subdivision map also included another street, Pacific Avenue, along its southern boundary. East of Kendall, opposite the Sterling Park subdivision, the Pacific Pines map set aside 81 feet for Pacific Avenue. West of Kendall, Pacific Pines adjoined Fortuna Park, which already had a street named Pacific Avenue, 78.5 feet wide, along its northern boundary. In this area the Pacific Pines map placed Pacific Avenue in the 61-foot strip, which, combined with the existing 78.5-foot avenue in Fortuna Park, would have created a street 139.5 feet wide. The developers announced that Pacific Avenue in this area would be divided into two roadways with a park in the center, a solution that can still be seen today. Pacific Avenue was renamed Pacific Beach Drive in 1935 to avoid any confusion with Pacific Highway, the new route from downtown to Del Mar through Rose Canyon (although the old name still appears on curbstones).

Brown and Snavely opened their new subdivision for public inspection and sale in June 1926. The Union announced that the Pacific Pines company had adopted ‘the subdivision of distinction’ as its slogan and that it would provide home sites where formality was not demanded but where restrictions had been provided. It was near the ocean and bay, bordered by rows of stately pine trees. In September the city council passed a resolution of intention that all streets in Pacific Pines were to be graded and paved with five inch Portland cement pavement, concrete curbs, sidewalks, cast iron water mains, fire hydrants, etc. The contract was awarded to Harris & Wearn in December 1926, and paving was completed in 1927, giving Pacific Pines some of the first paved residential streets in Pacific Beach. The curved curbs and sidewalks around the wide street corners, particularly the intersection of Oliver and Kendall at the center of the tract, became a signature feature of Pacific Pines.

The opening of Pacific Pines for inspection and sale coincided with the opening of several other subdivisions in Pacific Beach, including North Shore Highlands, Crown Point, Braemar and the Palisades, and all of these tracts initially experienced disappointing sales. In Pacific Pines only five lots were sold in 1927, and only one residence built, a stucco cottage valued at $9000 for J. P. Harris (of Harris & Wearn, the paving contractor). Mr. Harris’ home faced the ‘park’ laid out by his company in the wide expanse of Pacific Avenue. The number of addresses on the streets of Pacific Pines grew to 5 in 1929 and 7 by 1930, but growth stalled in the 1930s and only one additional address had been added by 1940 (6 of these early homes remain, recognizable by the Spanish style construction suggested to everyone building a residence in Pacific Pines).

Consolidated Aircraft moved to San Diego in 1935 and built a manufacturing complex next to the airport downtown. In 1940 Consolidated began production of the B-24 Liberator bomber, hiring tens of thousands of aircraft workers who mostly arrived from out of town. Thousands of military personnel were also stationed in San Diego and many more began arriving after war was declared in December 1941. Even before the government stepped in to develop temporary housing projects for defense workers, including several in Pacific Beach, commercial developers began meeting the demand for affordable housing in existing residential neighborhoods like Pacific Pines.

In July 1941 the Original Dennstedt Company advertised that 19 Title VI homes were under construction at Pacific Pines, a tree-shaded, home-like atmosphere in a marine location 7 minutes from San Diego, and more than thirty were planned. $250 down and no ‘extras’ was all you would need to move into a Dennstedt luxury home. Dennstedt ads emphasized that each home was different – original and individual; a buyer could choose from Norman, Colonial, Cape Cod, English, and others.  The $250 down payment applied to 2-bedroom homes; 3-bedrooms required $350 down. Dennstedt was joined by other developers and affordable 2-and 3-bedroom homes in Pacific Pines were sold nearly as fast as they could be built. The 1941 San Diego city directory had listed 8 addresses in Pacific Pines but by 1942 the list had grown to 67 addresses and in 1943 77 addresses were listed on these four blocks of 20 lots each. The city directories also showed that most of these residents were aircraft workers or military personnel.

Seventy-five years have passed since that Pacific Pines building boom and some of those homes have since been replaced by apartment buildings or town homes, but many remain, still recognizable as Cape Cod, English or the even earlier Spanish style. Some of the trees growing in Pacific Pines may also be the original pine (or cypress) trees that the developers had aimed to preserve.

In the mid-1920s the ocean-front area of Pacific Beach was still mostly vacant, but it was becoming less isolated. More people were driving automobiles and the Coast Highway between San Diego and Los Angeles, paved since 1919, ran through Pacific Beach on Garnet Avenue and Cass Street. Another branch of the highway, also paved, connected Garnet and Cass to downtown through Mission Beach. For those without cars, the San Diego Electric Railway opened a ‘fast’ streetcar line between San Diego and La Jolla in 1924. The No. 16 streetcar ran through Mission Beach and Pacific Beach over what is now Mission Boulevard.

This increased accessibility caught the attention of out-of-town real estate speculators and in October 1923 the San Diego Union reported that capitalists from Los Angeles and Long Beach had purchased about 350 acres in various areas of Pacific Beach, including more than half of its ocean frontage. The buyers indicated that they intended to spend money liberally to develop their holdings into one of the best residence sections in Southern California. In March 1925 they announced that one of their investments would be a ‘million-dollar pleasure pier’ at Pacific Beach. This development was to be financed and built by Ernest Pickering, who had successfully developed pleasure piers in Santa Monica and Venice (pleasure piers were essentially amusement parks built over the beach). Property values had skyrocketed after construction of the piers in these beach cities and the developers expected a similar return on their investment in Pacific Beach. Construction of the pier in Pacific Beach began in September 1925.

However, Pickering soon withdrew from the project and turned over the development of the Pacific Beach ocean-front to Neil Nettleship, an associate from Santa Monica. Nettleship believed that in order to prosper Pacific Beach would require an entirely new identity, beginning with a new name, San Diego Beach. He continued construction of the pier, which would be the centerpiece of the new San Diego Beach, and also began marketing selected tracts in the nearby ocean-front property that he controlled.

On April 18, 1926, with the pier ‘rapidly assuming form and substance’ at the foot of Garnet Avenue, the public was invited to its ‘formal christening’ as Crystal Pier. The christening of the pier would also be the occasion for the opening sale of the Palisades, scenic ocean-view sites one block from the beach and five blocks north of the new pier. The Palisades consisted of the four blocks lying between Chalcedony, Loring and Bayard streets and the streetcar line on Mission Boulevard, then called Allison Street. According to the official program the events would begin at the Palisades in the morning, with amplified music, a dance orchestra, nail-driving contests and airplane stunt-flying (any purchasers of Palisades home sites would also get a free airplane ride). The actual christening at the unfinished pier, where a mammoth bottle would be crushed by a new electrically-driven pile-driver, would occur in the afternoon. The keynote address would be delivered by Dr. H. K. W. Kumm, geographer, explorer, climatologist, the first white man to explore the last unknown inhabited portion of the globe in Central Africa, and a recent arrival in Pacific Beach, where he was planning to develop a better strain of passion fruit. There would also be a free treasure hunt for children and a surfboard riding exhibition.  Despite threatening weather and actual showers Nettleship claimed that a crowd estimated at 10,000 persons attended the christening ceremonies, ‘many sales of property being the consequence’.

Neil Nettleship had formed a partnership with Ben Tye and the Nettleship-Tye Company in turn formed the Crystal Pier Amusement Company, offering stock to investors to raise capital for their improvement projects. Some of these improvements were apparently in place by May, when Miss Palisades, the official representative of San Diego Beach, invited San Diegans to week-end near the pier where the Nettleship-Tye Company had installed a free public beach oven, picnic tables and benches (the invitation in the Union included a photo of Miss Palisades inspecting a pile-driver ‘now busy building Crystal Pier’).

Memorial Day, which even in 1926 was considered the beginning of ‘beach season’, came on Monday, May 31, and the promoters of San Diego Beach planned an elaborate ‘beach warming’ to usher it in. Like the Crystal Pier christening a month earlier, the beach warming would be the occasion for the opening sale of another Palisades tract, Palisades Ocean Front, between the beach and the streetcar line from Chalcedony to Loring streets. In preparation for a busy summer sales season the Nettleship-Tye Company had announced the appointment of the George F. Emery Organization as its general sales agent and the Emery Organization began its sales campaign by inviting all San Diego to help celebrate their taking over for sale the Nettleship-Tye land holdings, including Palisades Ocean Front, the choicest property in San Diego Beach. The beach warming arranged for the next Sunday and Monday would be the greatest free entertainment of its kind in the city’s history. The two-day ‘jollification’ would include music, a free luncheon, contests and souvenirs, and everything was free; you could make your headquarters at the big tent on the Palisades Ocean Front just north of the pier; ‘take No. 16 street car at Third and Broadway, or motor out and we shall park your car free’.

According to the Evening Tribune the first day of the beach warming was a great success; George Emery was quoted as saying that the sale of Palisades Ocean Front was gratifyingly large and he expected a repetition of the success on the second day. The results of that second day were also encouraging, convincing the Emery Organization to inaugurate a series of ‘weekly thrills’, beginning with a ‘tug-of-war’ between a Curtis airplane and a race car to be held at the picturesque Palisades, ‘now being eagerly purchased’. On that occasion the airplane won, but the car’s driver claimed mechanical problems and a ‘momentous second tug-of-war’ was scheduled for the following weekend.

In July the weekly thrills gave way to an ‘Announcement Extraordinary!’. A free lecture by the famed psychologist Brookhart, the idol of men and women who think of tomorrow in life’s calendar, would be given at the Palisades, San Diego Beach – at the big tent on Sunday, August 1. The subject would be ‘San Diego as I See and Analyze It’. The ad explained that Bae Pierre Brookhart, mentalist, philosopher, prophet, would tell you what the future holds in store for San Diego, how it would look 10 years from now. ‘This Great Seer, who sees all and knows all, will unroll the curtain of knowledge for all to read. Be at the Big Tent at 2 P.M. Sunday; you will be astounded at his revelations’. Free transportation would be furnished for those without cars but directions were provided for those who wished to drive out with their own car: ‘take Coast Highway toward La Jolla. After turning to the right at Pacific Beach corner, drive five blocks, look for big tent on left, and drive in’. In 1926 the ‘Coast Highway to La Jolla’ was Garnet Avenue and Cass Street and ‘Pacific Beach corner’ their intersection, where Dunaway Pharmacy was being built at the time. Five blocks north would be Chalcedony Street where the big tent could apparently be seen off to the left, within the Palisades tract (Bae Pierre Brookhart was described as a French-Indian philosopher; his book Sciences of Life as an ‘introductory amalgam of spiritual, esoteric tidbits’)

August 1 was also the day that plans were announced for construction of the North Shore Club at the Palisades. It would cost approximately $1,000,000, be six stories high, built of brick and art stone, with a huge arch over the highway, a pedestrian crossing connecting the first floor of the building to the beach and also a tunnel under the highway from the basement to the beach. There would be 100 guest rooms, a roof garden, veranda overlooking the ocean, a mezzanine floor entirely circling the building, and two elevators. Other amenities included a large dining room, main lobby, ballroom, swimming pool, gymnasium, locker rooms, tennis courts, gardens, fountains and a drug store and other concessions on the first floor. According to the San Diego Union, the entire block bounded by Chalcedony and Law streets and Ocean Boulevard, with 270 feet of ocean frontage, had already been purchased from the Geo. F. Emery Organization for $46,600.

The Geo. F. Emery ads in the Tribune repeated this news and announced that the ‘Deal is Closed! A group of lots in Block 79, Palisades, sold to a Beach Club Hotel Syndicate for $46,600, exactly what our printed price list call for – not a thin dime discount’. By September the North Shore Club itself was advertising; its September 3 ad in the Tribune, in advance of Labor Day, said that ‘Next Labor Day you can flee to this wonderful building – and so escape the greatest crowd in the city’s history’. ‘This wonderful building’ was represented by a drawing of a nine-story edifice occupying the entire block, with towers at the corners surmounted by radio masts. A ‘pedestrian overhead promenade’ crossed over the wide boulevard in front of the building and a tunnel opened onto the beach. The accompanying text explained that the tunnel directly connected the beach with the wonderful indoor swimming pool and that the building would include a radio broadcasting station.

The San Diego Union explained that beach clubs had saved the beaches of Los Angeles from overcrowding and cheap commercialism, they bestowed privacy and assured living quarters and breathing space for those who wished to go periodically to the beaches. In effect, they constituted a beach residence on an expenditure of a few hundred dollars, instead of the thousands required for a beach home of one’s own. San Diego would soon have the same beach problems as LA if it did not provide itself with adequate beach clubs. The North Shore Club continued to advertise through September 1926 but interest among potential members was apparently underwhelming and the ads and other references to a beach club at the Palisades soon disappeared from the papers.

In addition to advertisements aimed at potential purchasers, the promoters of Palisades real estate also targeted potential salesmen. An August ad by the Geo. F. Emery Organization in the Tribune was for Creative Salesmen for the Palisades, Top Commissions, Prospects Furnished. ‘Big money for men of ability who can handle high class clients’. Another August ad was for Salesmen With Cars; ‘Palisades going good. Big development to be started will make it go faster. Bus, lunch, lecture. Want efficient salesmen for permanent, high-class business’.

When the relationship between the Geo. F. Emery Organization and the Nettleship-Tye Company ended in October the Nettleship-Tye Company began placing its own classified ads for salesmen in the Tribune (the Emery Organization moved over to the North Shore Highlands subdivision a few blocks to the east of the Palisades, where it arranged an opening sale December 5 with another big tent, bands, refreshments and a free lunch). One Nettleship-Tye ad announced ‘This Is It’; they would start their fall campaign selling Palisades at San Diego Beach and could place a few more eager, earnest salesmen. Another ad said ‘Our men are hitting on high and no knocks. Buyers are buying Palisades at San Diego Beach. There is nothing better to buy and nothing better to sell’. Another said ‘Here’s the deal. Palisades, parlor car buses, solicitors, lunch, lecture and plenty of half page ads. Can use few high class salesmen with cars. More prospects than we can handle. See us quick for big money’. In another, ‘more real honest to goodness prospects than our force can handle – Palisades – San Diego’s hot-spot subdivision. If you have a good car and can sell here’s your permanent job’.

Information about the Palisades could also be found in the real estate sections of the local papers. An October article in the Union featured a view inside the new downtown offices of the Nettleship-Tye Company and of Mr. Tye working at his private desk. Tye claimed that an extensive improvement program would be rushed to completion following the fast sale of Palisades. The improvements would include gas, water, electricity, paved sidewalks, curbs and gutters, but since the improvements would more or less halt traffic in the area the public was urged to inspect the property prior to the improvement program and take advantage of the free dinner served daily at the Palisades Pavilion tent followed by a lecture on the scarcity and desirability of beach frontage.

In an article in the Tribune Mr. Tye commented on the large number of easterners buying homesites in the Palisades; one of the most prominent professional men of Kansas City, a capitalist of Detroit, and a woman very prominent in the social world of New York. ‘The most striking feature of the progress made by San Diego Beach in general and the Palisades in particular the past few months, is the tone of the beach. San Diego Beach will be a high class residential district of San Diego, as already proved by the Braemar development and now by the Palisades’. He continued that ‘It is certainly inspiring that former Pacific Beach, which never did seem to get a start, should now blossom into one of San Diego’s finest dwelling communities, as the swan proceeded from the duckling in the folk-story’. The story included a photo illustrating ‘home building at the Palisades’; the first and only home in the Palisades at the time, one that is still standing at 834 Beryl Street.

Beginning in August 1926 ads for the Palisades had begun to threaten a ‘price advance’; an ad in the Tribune asked ‘Do you want it? You will have to act now, for the present opportunity will be withdrawn in 30 days’ then went on to suggest the free parlor car tour with a delightful lunch and educational lecture at the Palisades and added that the Geo. F. Emery Tours were ‘the talk of the city’. As the year went on the warnings increased; in October it was ‘2nd Call. Only one more week-end until the first Palisade price advance! The buying stampede on November 7^th – last day of the old prices – will be so great that you better act now. Let the last-minute throngs rush over your property instead of you’.

Although these warnings of last-minute throngs and a buying stampede matched the rhetoric that the Palisades’ promoters had been proclaiming throughout the 1926 season, the actual results of the Palisades marketing campaign appear more modest. City lot books from that era document the ownership of each lot in each block of every subdivision in the city at noon of the first day of January every year. On January 1, 1927, the close of the year when the Palisades tracts had first been opened for sale, only 6 pairs of lots had changed hands in the original Palisades tract east of the streetcar line (Palisades ‘homesites’ were pairs of the standard 25-foot lots). In the Palisades Ocean Front tract west of the tracks, what had been three Pacific Beach blocks between Law and Loring streets (Blocks 41, 78 and 116) were re-subdivided in August 1926 as Nettleship-Tye Subdivision #1. In this new subdivision, which included the new Crystal and Dixie drives and a new city park, Palisades Park, no property had changed hands in 1926. The only substantial transfers of property had been on Block 79 in the ocean front tract, between Chalcedony and Law streets west of Allison, where on January 1, 1927 J. E. Dodd owned 27 lots; all 10 of the lots along Ocean Front Boulevard, the 16 lots on Chalcedony and one lot on Law Street. J. E. Dodd had represented the North Shore Club and was described as its president, but plans for a 9-story building on this property had not materialized and a year later, on January 1, 1928, all of Dodd’s holdings had reverted to the Crystal Pier Amusement Company (the other property on Law Street in Block 79 had already been in the hands of private owners before 1926 and was not part of the Palisades sales campaign). As for the prominent easterners buying homesites in the Palisades, all but two of the new owners of lots in these tracts had been listed in the San Diego city directory in recent years.

By the end of 1926 the Nettleship-Tye Company seemed to recognize that sales of homesites in the Palisades were lagging, and the company tested the idea of actually building and selling homes on the sites instead. A classified ad appeared in the Houses for Sale column of the San Diego Union in December 1926; ‘Modern bungalow, Palisades, San Diego Beach, half block off car line, beautiful home, large lot, two bedrooms and all modern conveniences, ready to move in, $1000 cash will handle. Will gladly show by appointment. Nettleship-Tye Co.’. An ad for Beach Property in July 1927 offered 1 new 5-room stucco, up-to-the-minute bungalow, beautiful Palisades location, very desirable, right place, easy terms. These ads could only refer to the home at 834 Beryl, the only home in existence in the Palisades at the time. It would eventually be purchased by Fay and Mary La Baume, the first actual residents of the Palisades (Mr. La Baume was a salesman for S. F. Woody, another Pacific Beach realtor).

In 1927 the promoters of the Palisades shifted their sales strategy again. Instead of the ‘half-page ads’ inviting the public to a luncheon and lecture, a Nettleship-Tye Company ‘salesmen wanted’ ad in May 1927 sought experienced subdivision salesmen and closers who know the ‘lunch and lecture method’ for a big summer campaign opening now. ‘We have the system and outside organization to put qualified out-of-town buyers on our beautiful Palisades beach property daily all summer long. City improvements going in now’.

‘City improvements’ such as paved sidewalks, curbs and gutters, had been mentioned before in Palisades ads but in May 1927 these improvements were finally happening. The city council had received a petition to pave the streets in the Palisades district in October 1926. An ordinance establishing the grade of these streets passed in January 1927, a resolution of intention was adopted in February and a resolution ordering work was adopted in March. Bids for the improvements were received in April the contract was awarded to E. Paul Ford. The improvements actually were ‘going in’ in May 1927 and were completed in June and July, dates that are stamped in the concrete sidewalks of the Palisades. In October 1927 the San Diego Beach Chamber of Commerce voted to hold a dance at the Crystal Pier Ballroom to celebrate the completion of paving in the Palisades (the pier, which included a ballroom over the water, had also been completed and opened in July 1927, but it turned out that the pilings had not been properly treated and were soon attacked by marine borers; it was condemned and closed in 1928, and not rebuilt until 1934).

Lot sales in the Palisades continued at about the same pace in 1927. Eight more homesites, or pairs of lots, had new owners on January 1, 1928, in the Palisades tract east of the streetcar line (including the homesite under the only actual home in the tract, which had been purchased by the La Baumes). West of the tracks, no lots had been sold yet in the Nettleship-Tye #1 subdivision and in Block 79 the 27 lots owned by J. E. Dodd for the North Shore Club at the beginning of 1927 had returned to the ownership of the Crystal Pier Amusement Company by 1928. With sales of lots lagging, in April 1928 the promoters changed direction again and advertised their ocean frontage for lease; ‘long term lease at low rental on an entire block of ocean front property at Pacific Beach, on the car line and suitable for beach cottages’.

The developers also revisited to the idea of actually building and selling homes instead of homesites in the Palisades. In April 1928 building permits were issued to the Nettleship-Tye Company for houses at 820, 827 and 838 Wilbur Street. Later that year the house at 820 Wilbur was one of four homes around the city that were featured in an educational exhibit by ‘Home Beautiful’ expert Rosalie Ann Hager. An article in the Union explained that this home in the lovely Palisades district overlooking the sea was built by the Nettleship-Tye Company and loaned to Miss Hager for the occasion. It was a medium-priced home of pure Spanish design with five rooms besides a large breakfast nook. There was a photo of the exterior of the home and a detailed description of its interior, including the color scheme, draperies, floor coverings and furniture, which Miss Hager had planned for a young couple. The Union reported that nearly 10,000 guests attended the week-long open house for these ‘Home Beautiful’ residences.

Despite the talk of buying stampedes and throngs of eager purchasers, only about 10 percent of the lots in the Palisades had actually been sold by 1928. The three homes built on Wilbur and the La Baume home on Beryl were the only actual residences and the La Baumes were the only residents. San Diego was still a small town in the 1920s and Pacific Beach was a remote suburb, even if it was served by a highway and a streetcar line. Potential buyers could also choose from other nearby subdivisions including Crown Point, Braemar, Pacific Pines and North Shore Highlands, all of which also opened in 1926 (and also had disappointing sales). Real estate sales would not improve for many years; the Great Depression which began in 1929 and lasted through the 1930s reduced economic activity of all kinds and in Pacific Beach the Mattoon Act further depressed the market by pyramiding ever-higher assessments on property owners to pay for construction of the causeway across Mission Bay.

The Nettleship-Tye company closed its branch office in the Crystal Pier building in 1930 and the partnership itself had ended by 1931 when Nettleship had Tye charged with grand theft for allegedly depositing the proceeds of lot sales into his own account instead of the company’s (the indictment was dismissed and the judge indicated that whatever difference the partners had should be settled in civil litigation). By 1940 only five more residences had been built in the Palisades, all in the section east of Mission Boulevard (which had been paved in 1928 and renamed in 1929) and there was still no home construction west of Mission Boulevard in the Palisades Ocean Front tract.

All of this changed in the 1940s as Consolidated Aircraft and other defense industries ramped up production during the war years and attracted tens of thousands of workers to San Diego. Many of these workers were first housed in temporary government housing projects in Pacific Beach, including the Los Altos Terrace project just two blocks from the Palisades. When the Federal Housing Authority made loans available for defense workers to buy commercially-built homes, builders attempting to meet the demand were attracted to tracts like the Palisades that had already been improved with paved streets, sidewalks and utilities but were still mostly vacant. This home-building surge continued even after the war and by the early 1950s there were few vacant lots to be found in any residential area of Pacific Beach, including the Palisades.