Garnet Avenue has always been the ‘main street’ of Pacific Beach. It began as College Avenue in 1887 when the community’s founders placed the college campus they expected to become the foundation of their new subdivision on the north side of the avenue, between Jewell and Lamont streets. The San Diego College of Letters was built there in 1888, but the college failed financially and closed after a few years. In 1910 the college campus was reborn as the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, later Brown Military Academy, which finally fulfilled the founders’ expectations and for several decades was the community’s most important institution. Growing enrollment at the academy during the 1920s attracted commercial development to the area, including a grocery store across the street at the southeast corner of Jewell and another commercial block with a grocery, restaurant, barber, confectionary shop and the local post office at the southwest corner of Lamont.

College Avenue had been renamed Garnet in 1900 and with the proliferation of automobiles in the first decades of the twentieth century became a link in the main coast highway between San Diego, Los Angeles and points north. Paved in 1919, the coast highway passed through Pacific Beach over Garnet, Cass and Turquoise streets and continued through La Jolla to Del Mar. As traffic increased on the coast highway in the 1920s the area around the intersection of Garnet and Cass became another focus of commercial activity, centered on the Dunaway pharmacy building on the northwest corner. However, there was little development on Garnet between the ‘old’ Pacific Beach which had grown up around the college and academy and the ‘new’ Pacific Beach around Dunaway’s, and little development anywhere in Pacific Beach during the depression years of the 1930s. By 1940 there were still only 75 addresses listed on Garnet Avenue in the San Diego city directory.

In 1935 Consolidated Aircraft moved to San Diego and attracted tens of thousands of workers from around the country to build B-24 Liberator bombers at its manufacturing complex near the airport (in 1941 Consolidated merged with Vultee to become Consolidated Vultee Aircraft, or Convair). The war years of the early 1940s also brought large numbers of military personnel and their families to San Diego which added to the influx of aircraft workers to create a massive housing shortage. The federal government built temporary housing projects within commuting range of Consolidated, including several in Pacific Beach, and private contractors also began building low-cost homes in Pacific Beach, including on Garnet Avenue.

Between Dawes and Everts streets, where the only existing improvements had been Snyder’s gas station at 1106 and the Pacific Beach Lumber Company at 1121 Garnet, houses were built at 1160 in 1938 and 1140 Garnet in 1939. Across the street, at 1151 Garnet, a ‘1940 Honeymoon Economy Cottage’, described as a two-bedroom home and large lot on a paved street, was offered for $142.50 down. The houses at 1140  and 1160 Garnet are actually still there, at the back of their lots behind the storefronts on the sidewalk. Four 1-bedroom homes, built in 1946, are also still standing at 1757 – 1765 Garnet, across from what was then Brown Military Academy and is now a CVS pharmacy in Pacific Plaza. Further east on Garnet, many houses and apartments built in the 1940s and 1950s are still standing between Morrell and Pendleton streets.

However, most development along Garnet Avenue from the 1940s on has been devoted to businesses and other services for the growing number of residents moving into homes elsewhere in Pacific Beach. When the Spanish Mission-style Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church was built in 1941 at the southwest corner of Garnet and Jewell Street, replacing the community’s first church, which had occupied that location since the 1880s, the San Diego Union reported that the new edifice was designed to serve a community whose population had more than doubled in the last year and a half. On the same block, at the southeast corner of Ingraham, H. C. Curtis built a masonry and stucco store and opened a grocery and meat market in 1941. In 1942 another store building was constructed diagonally across that intersection, at 1570 – 1580 Garnet. War had been declared in December 1941 and a number of items including sugar and tires were rationed to prevent shortages or increase availability for the war effort. The office of the rationing board for the Pacific Beach area was in this new building, at 1570 Garnet; the other three storefronts there began as a church, beauty shop and grocery. A nursery opened in the same block, at 1530 Garnet, in 1942.

Further west, between Dawes and Everts, the Victory Café and Victory Billiard Parlor opened in 1941 at 1159 and 1161 Garnet. Between Bayard and Cass streets two small shops, a barber at 954 and a variety store at 933 Garnet, were built in 1942. Next door to the barber, at 956 Garnet, a restaurant opened in another new building in 1944. These storefronts in the 900 block joined the Dunaway pharmacy buildings at the corner with Cass, built in the 1920s, as the only buildings on the block at that time. Other buildings built during the war years at this end of Garnet included a barber shop at 1036 and a liquor store at 1038 Garnet.

World War II ended in August 1945 and a little over a year later, in September 1946, the Mission Bay branch of the Security Trust & Savings Bank opened in an imposing building at 875 Garnet, the southwest corner of Garnet and Bayard (the original bank building is now gone and a clothing store occupies this corner today). An ad in the San Diego Union inviting residents to an open house included a message from the Pacific Beach Chamber of Commerce, ‘Another Forward Step’, which noted that the population of Pacific Beach had been 6000 in 1941 and had grown over the war years to over 24,000. According to the chamber, a well-planned business development had been under way since January 1945 which had given Pacific Beach close to two million dollars in business buildings and service establishments. Many more business buildings had been contracted for and would go into construction when war-time restrictions were eased. The war emergency had stopped plans for the bank but these plans were activated immediately upon cessation of hostilities.

The 1946 ad for the Security bank included a list of 23 existing Pacific Beach businesses that extended a hearty welcome and best wishes for the bank’s success. All but one were on Garnet (the other was a block south, on Ingraham), and 15 had opened in new buildings along Garnet within the previous year. Seven of these new businesses were in the 1500 block, between Haines and Ingraham streets, including Pacific Beach Hardware at 1520, Academy Cleaners at 1525, Pacific Seafood at 1535, H & R Sporting Goods at 1559 and H & W Electric at 1561. Sibley’s Shoes and Bonnie’s Sportswear, at 1560 and 1562 Garnet, were in one of four new buildings extending along the north side of the block.

Three of the other new businesses listed in the chamber’s 1946 ad were in the 1900 block of Garnet, between Lamont and Morrell streets; Les Hanson Plumbing at 1936, Henry Rigoli’s real estate office at 1958, and George Brooks’ real estate office at the northwest corner of Morrell, 1976 Garnet. Other stores that had opened on Garnet and welcomed the new bank in 1946 included John’s food market and drug store at 1260 and 1280, Pacific Beach Auto at 1321, Western Auto at 1401 and a photography studio at 1845 Garnet, now absorbed into Broken Yolk café.

As the chamber had predicted, many more business buildings went into construction after wartime restrictions were lifted. In the first block of Garnet there had been a restaurant at 701 Garnet, the southeast corner of Ocean Boulevard since the 1920s, and in 1945 another restaurant opened on the northeast corner, at 704 Garnet. A building at 714 Garnet, built in 1947, became Bert’s Place bar in 1951 and by 1952 a building in between, at 710 Garnet opened as Sleep E-Z Mattress, soon to become the Elbow Room bar.

Between Bayard and Cass the row of storefronts at 951 to 959 Garnet had been built by 1950. A jewelry store, beauty shop and liquor store were among the early tenants. Across the street, Ted Schiller’s camera store and a furniture store had opened at 936 and 930 Garnet. The store at 930 was demolished to make way for a Bank of America parking lot in 1979 but the store that had been Ted Schiller’s is still there.

In the 1000 block of Garnet Malanga Shoe Repair and Malanga Dry Cleaner opened at 1029 and 1031 Garnet in 1948 and in 1949 another pair of buildings went up next door, Bryan’s Paint and a photo supply store at 1035 and 1037 and women’s clothing, shoes and a paint supply store at 1041 to 1045 Garnet. Also in 1949 a medical arts building with two physicians and a dentist went up at 1050 and a barber shop opened next door at 1058 Garnet.  A Western Union telegraph office occupied the building at 1059 Garnet by 1950.

The Victory Lanes bowling alley, a long-time Pacific Beach landmark, held its grand opening in October 1948 at 1165 Garnet. In the same block of Garnet a pair of new buildings went up in the late 1940s, 1118, an auto repair shop and 1122, a paint store. The buildings at 1136, 1138 and 1140 and, across the street, the Arcade building at 1135 Garnet had all opened by 1950. In addition to two storefronts on Garnet, the Arcade building had a long interior corridor that was lined with offices and shops. These buildings are all still there, although the iconic sign on the former Victory Lanes building was taken down in the 1980s and only the base remains. A gas station at 1186, the northwest corner of Everts, had also opened by 1950 but closed by 1970.

Also opened before 1950 were a row of adjoining storefronts in the 1300 block, extending from 1331 to 1349 Garnet. At the time these were a stationer, real estate office, clothing stores, the North Shores Sentinel newspaper and Waibel’s Café. Used car lots at 1375, the southwest corner of Gresham, and 1370, the northwest corner, had opened and a brick dentist office at 1344 and the Pacific Beach Veterinary Clinic, still open at 1362 Garnet, had all been built by 1950.

There had been three homes in the 1400 block of Garnet since the 1920s but no further development until a Western Auto store opened at 1401, the southeast corner of Gresham, in 1946. By 1950 a row of storefronts had been built on the south side of the street, between 1415 and 1433, with Garnet beauty shop, H & H model store, a restaurant and an electric contractor. On the north side, between 1430 and 1466 Garnet were Harry Malin optometry, real estate offices, a lawyer, Boney’s market and another restaurant. A Tastee Freeze ice cream shop also opened in 1949 at 1474 Garnet, the northwest corner of Haines, but that building is no longer there and today’s Mr. Frostie shop is located in the strip mall that replaced it in the 1960s.

Between Ingraham and Jewell streets the north side of Garnet had long been the parade ground and athletic fields of Brown Military Academy. In 1950 Safeway built what it called its largest and most modern supermarket in San Diego, along with a parking lot that together covered most of that side of the block. In 1961 Safeway replaced that store with what was again characterized as San Diego’s most modern supermarket, set further back on the property. The store has since undergone other changes in ownership and been rebuilt again and the space is now anchored by a Trader Joe’s market. On the south side of Garnet, Sampsons’s Store for Men and Boys also moved into a new building at 1625 Garnet in 1950.

Across from Brown Military Academy in the 1700 block of Garnet an automobile paint shop at 1717, an auto repair shop at 1727 and an appliance shop at 1753 had opened by 1949, Milton’s Fix-It shop at 1721 and Lloyd’s Bike Shop at 1749 were added the next year and a chiropractor office at 1711 the year after that. In the 1800 block, also across from the academy, a pair of buildings built in 1949 at 1833 and 1837 Garnet became a sheet metal business and poultry shop. The Mission Bay Masonic Club was meeting at 1827 Garnet in 1950.

Development continued along Garnet Avenue during the 1950s. A ‘small café’ opened in 1950 at the southwest corner of Mission Boulevard which by 1953 had been superseded by Oscar’s drive-in. The Old Ox later occupied the site and it is now the Fat Fish. And in January 1951, a month after Safeway held the grand opening of the city’s largest supermarket in the 1600 block of Garnet, another supermarket, a Food Basket, said to be the largest in the county, opened at the northwest corner of Garnet and Mission Boulevard.

Dr. Mitchell opened an office at 845 Garnet in 1951 and across the street Earl Taylor built a real estate office at 826 Garnet in 1952. By 1956 a dentist office had also been built next to the doctor at 835 Garnet. In November 1953 a 35,000 square foot building at 909 Garnet, the southeast corner of Bayard, became a J. C. Penney department store. Two other companies, Highlander men’s clothing and Evelyn Wigton’s apparel, also occupied 25-foot storefronts in the same building, at 915 and 919 Garnet. F. W. Woolworth at 945 and a Singer Sewing Center at 939 Garnet both opened in 1955, and Kirby’s Shoes at 929 and Anita Frocks at 931 Garnet were in business by 1957. By 1958 the building at 967 – 969 Garnet had also been constructed; 967 was originally a bargain women’s clothing shop and 969 an Italian restaurant.

In the 1000 block of Garnet Bryan’s Paint moved across the street from 1035 to a new building at 1060 Garnet in 1950. In 1952 the paint store moved again, to 1062 Garnet, and the Ten Thirty Eight Club became the first of many bars to occupy 1060 Garnet, moving from its previous address at 1038 Garnet. Barbecue Pit opened in 1953 at 1030, Frazee Paint opened next door at 1020 Garnet in 1954 and in 1958 Vic Tanny’s gym opened across the street at 1019 Garnet. There had long been a gas station at the northeast corner of Cass but in January 1959 a new branch of Home Federal Savings and Loan opened on that corner, at 1000 Garnet. According to the San Diego Union the two-story Monterey style building included 7,500 square feet and cost a quarter-million dollars. Suburban Savings and Loan had an office across the street at 1001 Garnet, the southeast corner of Cass, but in 1960 a permit valued at $192,000 was issued for construction of a new building to replace their old quarters. In the 1970s and 80s that new building became a Pacific Bell service center.

A & A Hardware opened at 1220 Garnet in 1950 and in 1951 Muehling’s  department store, at 1277 Garnet, the southwest corner of Fanuel, a Cornet 5-10-25-cent store at 1257 Garnet, and a building in between with four storefronts, 1261, 1263, 1265 and 1269, then Karl’s Shoes, Sid’s men’s wear, Jewel Box and Mode O’Day women’s clothing stores, were built. Two more women’s clothing stores, Berner Shops and Remar’s, at 1221 and 1231 opened in 1953 and the Thrifty ‘cut rate drug store’ at 1211 Garnet in 1956. At the opposite end of the block Telisales had opened a television salesroom at 1200 Garnet in November 1952. By 1956 this building had become the Green Room cocktail lounge and has been a drinking establishment ever since (Flamingo, Pink Phink, Daily Planet, Tavern at the Beach).

Kitty-corner across Fanuel from Muehlings’s, at 1302 Garnet, the U. S. National Bank building was completed in 1951. The Union reported that bank president C. Arnholt Smith was trying something new, getting away from the conventional design for banks, and that the one-story brick building followed ‘Normandy architectural lines’. The brick bank building is still there but is now a Wells Fargo. In 1952 an optometrist and the Allison-McCloskey escrow company moved into a new building at 1350 – 56 Garnet and a lawyer occupied the new building at 1360 Garnet. Another optometrist office had opened by 1956 at 1330 Garnet and a doctor and dentist office at 1324 was open by 1957. Allison-McCloskey escrow moved to a new office building at 1336 Garnet in 1960.

A number of buildings went up in the first years of the 1950s in the 1400 block of Garnet. On the north side, a building at 1420 – 22 Garnet housed Valdon Shops, a women’s clothing store, and the Mission Trails gift shop . Across the street, McDaniel’s dime store opened at 1439 Garnet and H & R sporting goods, the Hollywood beauty shop, Togs for Tots and Cameron’s shoes occupied the building at 1447 – 53. Alexander’s book and stationery store opened in one building at 1459 and Golden State Fabrics in another at 1471 Garnet (the house that had been numbered 1471 Garnet since the 1920s was renumbered 1465 and remained, as the Pacific Beach Mortuary and Tommy’s TV, until replaced by a bicycle shop in 1970). In the 1500 block a new building at 1550 housed a restaurant in 1950 and one at 1554 Garnet had a furniture business by 1952. In 1954 Golden State Fabrics moved from 1471 into a new building across Haines Street, at 1501 Garnet. The building next door, then numbered 1515, 1517 and 1519 Garnet, had opened the year before as a beauty salon and men’s clothing store.

At the southwest corner of Kendall a seat cover center and auto body shop had gone into business at 1775 and 1777 Garnet by 1953. The building at 1735 Garnet was built in 1954 and for years was a Frontier Furniture outlet. Robert Ravenscroft had built a grocery with living quarters upstairs at 1701 Garnet, the southeast corner of Jewell, in 1926. The grocery was closed in 1942 and the upstairs converted to apartments, and in 1977 the entire building, and the adjoining building at 1711 Garnet, was replaced by a San Diego Federal Savings and Loan branch, one of the first to have an automated ’24-hour Teller’. The building at 1717 Garnet later became a parking lot for the savings and loan branch, which is now a V-Outlet. The other buildings on this block remain, including a house built in 1926, the first improvement on this side of the block, still standing behind the façade of a smog check station at 1741 Garnet. In the 1800 block, Balboa Electric had opened at 1811 Garnet by 1952. The building which had stood at the southwest corner of Lamont since the 1920s continued to support a variety of commercial activities including a drug store, grocery, laundry, variety store, beauty salon and eventually the Back Door bar throughout the 1950s until it was replaced by a gas station in 1964.

One of the first buildings on Garnet Avenue, and the first residence, had been built in 1894 at the southeast corner of Lamont Street by Sterling Honeycutt, an early Pacific Beach lemon rancher. In the 1920s another structure was built in front of the Honeycutt house that by the 1940s had become Eno’s soda fountain, stationer, news dealer, utility company collection office and Greyhound bus depot. Mrs. Eno lived in the former Honeycutt house behind the store. In 1954 these buildings were replaced by Henry’s drive-in, at 1905 Garnet. A building across the street at 1926 Garnet was constructed in 1955 for a furniture and appliance store. A building at the northeast corner of Lamont, built in 1958, became a carpet store and the Tumbleweed Tavern before being replaced in 1974 by a Glendale Federal bank.

Brown Military Academy was located on the north side of Garnet between Jewell and Lamont streets. The academy had begun in 1910 as the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in the buildings constructed in the 1880s for the San Diego College of Letters but in the late 1920s had added a number of new buildings including four large reinforced concrete dormitories. Burdened by the construction costs the Army and Navy Academy failed financially during the depression years of the 1930s and the campus had been sold to John Brown Schools in 1937. Since then the academy had been increasingly ‘hemmed in’ by Pacific Beach’s growth and in 1958 Brown Schools ‘released’ its 23-acre campus ‘to meet the community’s need for its rapidly increasing business expansion’; retention of the campus for school purposes ‘would not be wise financially in view of the land’s increased commercial value’. Brown Military would move to a campus in Glendora and the property was sold for over a million dollars to a commercial development company to become a shopping center and apartment project.

The academy’s last commencement exercises were held in June 1958 and demolition began soon after; the Union reported in August that workers razing the former college buildings had found artifacts dating from the 1888 ceremonial laying of the cornerstone of the college, the first significant building in Pacific Beach. A groundbreaking ceremony for the Pacific Plaza shopping center was held in 1960 and a supermarket, bank, bowling alley, cinema, numerous stores and huge parking lots filled these two blocks along Garnet soon after. This shopping center was itself extensively rebuilt in the 1980s. Another groundbreaking had taken place at the other end of Garnet in 1959 where a 31,000 square foot building at the southeast corner of Mission Boulevard became the new home of Muehling’s department store and later Miller’s West. This building was also replaced in 1980 and is now Sea Coast Square.

Garnet Avenue had originally ended just east of Pendleton Street, where it merged into what was then called Grand Avenue (which was also the right of way of the railway between Pacific Beach and downtown San Diego). Grand Avenue (and the railway, before it was scrapped in 1919) continued across Rose Creek and around what had been a race track before turning south on the route of today’s Mission Bay Drive. In 1937 what had been Grand east of Lamont Street was renamed Balboa Avenue and Grand Avenue was extended over what had been Ivy Avenue, the street that continued in a straight line from Lamont to Mission Bay Drive through the former race track property. In 1960 the section of Balboa east of the merge with Garnet was renamed again, becoming the extension of Garnet Avenue.

The extension of Garnet Avenue east of Pendleton developed at a different pace and with a different character then the original section of Garnet. Grand Avenue had been much wider than other streets and avenues in Pacific Beach to accommodate the railway which once ran down its center so the section that became Balboa and then the eastern extension of Garnet is wider, and carried more traffic, than the original section of Garnet.

East of Rose Creek Garnet Avenue is now dominated by automotive services, drive-in fast food eateries and strip malls with large parking lots. In 1940 the only consumer business in this district was Boland’s grocery near the northwest corner of Mission Bay Drive, then called Pacific Highway. By 1942 a gas station had also opened on southeast corner of the Pacific Highway. Wartime population growth, particularly from the nearby Bayview Terrace housing project, led to commercial building in the block west of Pacific Highway, then the 2700 block of Balboa, with another gas station on the south side of the block and another grocery, a restaurant and a liquor store on the north side. In the intervening years most development in this section has replaced whatever was there before, although the Wienerschnitzel at the corner of Bond Street dates from the mid 1960s. In 1973 Home Savings & Loan built a branch at the southwest corner of Garnet and Mission Bay Drive, now a Chase Bank. The only building remaining from the 1940s is the former Boland’s grocery building, now the Nite Owl cocktail lounge.

West of Rose Creek the extension of Garnet now passes through what was once the Bayview Terrace federal housing project and is now the Admiral Hartman Community, a government-owned residential area with no frontage on Garnet. In the years before the federal government acquired this property the Kate Sessions nursery sales office was located on this street just west of the creek, a site now commemorated with a California historic landmark plaque. From 1888 to 1893 a plant making asbestos products was also located on the north side of the street, about where it now intersects Soledad Mountain Road. Across the street is the Rose Creek Cottage, the tudor-style dining room from the Scripps Braemar Manor on Mission Bay transplanted to this location in the 1980s. From there a sign points the way to the business district of Garnet Avenue, the main street in Pacific Beach.

On the original 1887 subdivision map of Pacific Beach ‘avenues’ ran in an east-west direction between the Pacific Ocean and the vicinity of Rose Creek and ‘streets’ ran north and south between False (now Mission) Bay and the Mt. Soledad foothills. One avenue, Grand Avenue, was also the right-of-way of the railway between Pacific Beach and downtown San Diego and was considerably wider than the others. The avenues south of Grand were named for PB’s founders, who included J. R. Thomas and D. C. Reed. The avenues north of Grand, with a single exception, were named for states. The exception was College Avenue, two blocks north of Grand, so-called because it was the site of the San Diego College of Letters campus, on the north side between 9^th and 11^th (now Jewell and Lamont) streets. The college, opened in 1888, was the first significant development in Pacific Beach and was intended to be the economic and cultural magnet that would attract residents to the new community. The first church was also located on College Avenue, across from the college, and in 1896 the schoolhouse was moved next door to the church. In 1900 the avenues north of Grand were renamed for gemstones and College became Garnet Avenue, but it is still the community’s main street.

The college failed in 1891 and for the next decade Pacific Beach flourished as a center of lemon cultivation. One of the first lemon ranchers was Sterling Honeycutt, who in 1893 planted his trees on the blocks directly across from the college campus, south of Garnet. In 1894 Honeycutt also built a house across Lamont Street from his ranch, at the southeast corner of Garnet and Lamont. The Honeycutt house was the first home on Garnet Avenue, joining the college buildings, the church and the school as its only improvements at the time. In fact, only a portion of the avenue itself was improved; according to the 1903 edition of the United States geological survey map the roadway in front of the former college buildings only extended from Haines to Noyes streets. The map showed that only Grand Avenue (and the railway) and Diamond Street actually extended from one end of the community to the other.

Lemon ranching declined after the turn of the twentieth century and in 1903 most of the property in Pacific Beach was purchased by Folsom Bros. Co., real estate operators who believed that the future of the community was in residential development. Folsom Bros. took over and refurbished the former college and it opened as the Hotel Balboa in 1905. They also began improving streets in the area surrounding it, including Garnet Avenue. Residential development did follow; the Evening Tribune reported in December 1903 that work had begun on Sterling Honeycutt’s new home on College between 12^th and 13^th worth nearly $5000 (the new street names, actually Garnet, Morrell and Noyes since 1900, were apparently not yet widely accepted in PB). The news in April 1904 was that Mr. Honeycutt’s new house was nearly completed and that another handsome residence on Garnet would be built by Mr. Overshiner. The Honeycutt home was at the northwest corner of Garnet and Noyes; the Overshiner home, also completed in 1904, was at the northwest corner with Olney. Another new resident on Garnet was Charles McCrary, who moved into a home he had built on the south side of Garnet west of Morrell Street. In 1905 George Harris also built a home on Garnet, on the north side between Olney and Pendleton.

By 1906 the San Diego Union reported that ‘from a hamlet to a flourishing suburb . . . from a district marked by quiet and solitude to one where business activity and social gaiety are everywhere – this in brief is the history of Pacific Beach, covering a period of but a year or two. To the visitor of a few years back, Pacific Beach would hardly be recognized as the same place. Instead of fields covered with their green verdure are to be found city blocks interweaved with a network of graded streets and wide boulevards with a multitude of sightly residences dotting the surface of the suburb . . . The year just closed has witnessed more improvement than may be found in the entire aggregate of all the other years of the existence of the suburb’. The Union added that ‘Many new residences, some of them of beautiful and elaborate design’, had been constructed and occupied, including that of George Harris.

Over the next few years several more homes were built on Garnet Avenue in the vicinity of Noyes Street. Two houses were built in 1907 at the northeast corner of Noyes, across from Honeycutt’s new home, and Mr. Honeycutt himself had two more homes built in the same block, between Morrell and Noyes, in 1909 and 1912. The four blocks of Garnet between Lamont and Pendleton streets became one of the two main centers of residential development in Pacific Beach. Some of the original homes are still standing in the other area, Hornblend between Morrell to Ingraham streets, a block south and a few blocks west, but none of the first homes on Garnet have survived. A driver training video captured a couple of them in the background around Noyes Street during the 1960s.

The first automobile appeared in San Diego in 1900 and as automobile ownership grew in the new century the San Diego city council designed a system of ‘boulevards’ radiating from downtown to more distant suburbs like Pacific Beach and La Jolla. The La Jolla boulevard was planned to pass through Pacific Beach following Garnet Avenue to Cass Street, then north to Turquoise and on through Bird Rock to La Jolla. The populated section of Garnet Avenue, between Lamont and Pendleton, had been graded in 1907 and in 1908 a force of 30 men and several teams began grading the section between Pacific Beach and La Jolla. The surface of the boulevard was to be of natural earth, thoroughly rolled.

While the roadway had been improved in places there were still no structures along Garnet west of the former college and the church and schoolhouse, which were at the corner of Jewell Street. This changed in 1909 when the San Diego Union reported that H. W. Parker had completed a new house on the north side of Garnet, less than two blocks from the beach, between Allison and Bayard streets (Allison was renamed Mission Boulevard in 1929). Two years later J. W. Simmons built a home next door to the Parker house, on the corner with Bayard, and in 1913 Parker built a second house adjoining his existing residence. These three frame houses stood alone near the western end of Garnet Avenue for decades.  One of them, later the long-time home of Rev. George Williams, then Casa Aljones, Diego’s Mexican restaurant and the PB Bar & Grill, survived until just a few years ago when it was replaced by Mavericks Beach Club. Also in 1913, Michael McCusker built a 5-room cottage at the northeast corner of Haines in the formerly empty stretch of Garnet between Bayard and Jewell streets.

The Hotel Balboa, the former college buildings on the north side of Garnet between Lamont and Jewell streets, had not been successful and in 1910 it was leased to Capt. Thomas Davis. Capt. Davis turned the former college and hotel buildings into the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, ‘a select school for manly boys’. In its first year the academy only had 13 cadets and Capt. Davis was the only instructor, but it grew rapidly and by 1918 it was described as ‘by far the liveliest institution of the community, and at the same time Pacific Beach’s most substantial asset’. By 1920 the ‘battalion of cadets’ had grown from 13 to over 100, most of whom were housed in wooden cottages on the academy campus. Some teachers and staff, including cooks, housekeepers and janitors, were housed in the former hotel buildings.

With still more cars on the road the city engineer was asked in 1912 to recommend a route for a highway to connect San Diego to the state highway that had reached the city limits at Del Mar. Although there was a winding wagon road through Rose Canyon the engineer recommended a route over the straight and level streets of Pacific Beach, over Grand Avenue and Bayard Street, continuing through La Jolla and over Torrey Pines Mesa. The proposed highway would be paved and local residents would be assessed the paving costs. The railway still ran down the center of Grand at that time and Pacific Beach residents complained that it would be unsuitable for automobile traffic, and that the costs of paving both sides would be excessive. Their recommendation was for the coast highway to run through Pacific Beach over Garnet Avenue and Cass Street, and the council eventually agreed. Garnet Avenue was paved in November 1919 and Seth Mitchell opened an ‘oil station’ at the northeast corner of Garnet and Cass, the first commercial establishment on the street.

Although there were few houses and fewer businesses along Garnet Avenue, the coast highway traffic made it a prime target for billboard advertising. In July 1919 the Pacific Beach Citizens’ Improvement Club petitioned the council to prohibit the erection of billboards and to remove those already erected. The billboards were declared to be an eyesore and a traffic hazard; ‘For the past two years our community has been blessed with these unsightly and disfiguring billboards. In consequence of these obstructions three or four serious accidents have occurred. Three machines have gone into the ditches, another has had a wheel torn off and another had a side stove in, all caused by the view being cut off by great boards. We ask you to prohibit the erection of any more boards here, and would ask for the removal of boards already here’. The council apparently disregarded this petition; the billboard company Foster & Kleiser obtained a building permit for another ‘poster panel’ at 1280 Garnet in 1926 and for many years billboards were the only ‘improvements’ on several blocks of Garnet Avenue. Like other improvements they were assigned a value for property tax purposes; the city lot books recorded their assessed values at $40 each.

The coast highway and plans for a fast electric streetcar line between downtown and La Jolla over Allison Street attracted the interest of out-of-town real estate speculators who in October 1923 closed a $750,000 deal for hundreds of acres in Pacific Beach. One of these capitalists was Earl Taylor, and according to the San Diego Union he had acquired more than 100 lots near the ocean front:

This property extends from Cass boulevard over which the state highway runs north, to Allison street, which will be used by the new electric car line to La Jolla, extension of which has been a factor in the big deal now announced. More than half of these lots face on Garnet street, the east and west highway through Pacific Beach. Mr. Taylor plans a business district here, beginning at the point where the highway turns to the north, and which now is occupied by a service station. He has plans prepared for a big business block at the corner of Cass and Garnet. A drug store, grocery and confectionery store already have asked for space in this building, he says.

In March 1924 Taylor announced the commencement of construction on the New Business Center of Pacific Beach. The first building – a modern brick store – would be started the next day and others would follow on Garnet between Cass Street and the ocean front. Around this, ‘as a nucleus’, would cluster the ‘splendid business and home development of the new Pacific Beach’. He added that the paving of Garnet from Cass to the ocean front for its whole 52 feet of width had already been authorized and would be pushed through as rapidly as possible. Sidewalking of several of the blocks 14 feet wide would be started at once. It was the intersection of the main artery to the beach and the main coast highway, it was convenient to the present population of over 1000, which was rapidly increasing, and over 6000 autos daily, including about 70 auto stages, passed or turned at this point; over 25,000 people going through each day. Before July electric cars (i.e., the streetcar line) would be running on Allison Street, two blocks west.

The modern brick store, the first building in the new Pacific Beach business district, was the original Dunaway pharmacy, at 981 Garnet Avenue, the southwest corner of Cass. During the prohibition years of the 1920s prescriptions for ‘medicinal’ alcohol could be filled at pharmacies and in 1926 the Evening Tribune reported that 12 pints of bonded whisky, as well as a revolver and $5.50 in cash, were included in the loot obtained by burglars at Dunaway’s drug store. Later in 1926 work began on the two-story brick edifice on the northwest corner of Garnet and Cass and Samuel Dunaway moved across the street to this building, 980 Garnet, in 1927. The new Dunaway pharmacy and soda fountain operated on this corner for decades and the building, where the Dunaway name is still carved in the lintel over the front door, is the best-known historic building in Pacific Beach. There was also a one-story brick extension to the west on Garnet with several storefronts on Garnet. In 1927 two of these storefronts were occupied by a plumber and a hardware company. The original pharmacy building across Garnet became a real estate office.

Earl Taylor had also reached out to Ernest Pickering, the developer of successful ‘pleasure piers’ in Santa Monica and Venice, and in 1925 Pickering announced plans for a million-dollar pleasure pier in Pacific Beach (a pleasure pier was basically an amusement park built out over the beach, with amusements such as Ginger Snaps, Great Slides, Over-the-Tops, and Treat-em-Roughs). However, Pickering soon backed out and development of the project was turned over to Santa Monica realtor Neil Nettleship. Under Nettleship the plan changed from a pleasure pier to a ballroom, the Crystal Ballroom on Crystal Pier, which would extend from the western end of Garnet Avenue nearly 1000 feet into the ocean. The pier and ballroom were among the improvements Nettleship hoped would change the character of Pacific Beach, which he also wanted to rename San Diego Beach. Construction began on the office building at the head of the pier in 1925, a ‘formal christening’ was held in April 1926 and the pier and ballroom opened to the public in July 1927.

However, it turned out that the pier’s pilings had not been treated with the proper preservatives and within a few months they had been attacked by marine borers and weakened to the point that the pier and ballroom were condemned and closed. It would be another nine years before the pier at the end of Garnet was repaired and reopened. Nettleship and his partner Benjamin Tye maintained a real estate office in the pier building and Burt Bircher opened a restaurant across Ocean Boulevard, the southeast corner of Garnet in 1926. Also in 1926 Earl Taylor had a small real estate office built at the other end of the block, the northwest corner of Garnet and Allison. Allison Street was renamed Mission Boulevard in 1929, extending the boulevard from Mission Beach through Pacific Beach, and also in 1929 another gas station was opened at the southeast corner of Mission and Garnet.

Although neither Taylor’s New Pacific Beach nor Nettleship’s San Diego Beach had the immediate success that had been anticipated for them, other business establishments and homes were built along Garnet in the 1920s. Herman Owen had built a house in the same block as the service station, at 1078 Garnet, in 1920. In 1924 William and Laura Samuel opened a restaurant opposite the Dunaway building on the southeast corner of Cass and Folsom Bros., attempting to reenter the real estate market in Pacific Beach, moved into an office built next door at 1011 Garnet in 1925. Across the street, buildings erected at 1020 Garnet in 1925 and 1038 Garnet in 1926 became another real estate office and a furniture store.

Another service station had been built on Garnet in 1923 at the northeast corner of Dawes, and across Garnet, on the southeast corner of Dawes, the Pacific Beach Lumber Company opened in 1925. Further east, at the northeast corner of Everts, Rose Murphy opened the Pacific Beach Laundry in 1926. The blocks between Fanuel and Haines streets, previously only occupied by billboards, saw homes built at 1471 and 1425 Garnet in 1922 and 1925 and more real estate offices opened at 1365 and 1440 Garnet in 1926. Between Haines and Ingraham, in 1925 Martha McCusker built a new house at 1506, next door to her former home at 1504 Garnet, and in 1926 another residence was constructed on the same block at 1526 Garnet. Across the street, Percy Eldridge had lived at 1551 Garnet since 1922 and Sigmund Mattey opened the Pacific Beach Garage at the southwest corner of Ingraham Street the same year. A home was also built at the other end of the block, at 1503 Garnet, the southeast corner of Haines, in 1926.

The San Diego school district built a new school for Pacific Beach two blocks north of Garnet, on the west side of Ingraham Street, in 1923. The original schoolhouse, on Garnet west of Jewell, next to the Presbyterian church, was moved to a new site on the San Diego Army and Navy Academy campus to become its junior school. In its place W. E. Standley built a frame cottage and garage valued at $2800 at 1655 Garnet in 1924. Another cottage had been built west of the schoolhouse, at 1637 Garnet, by Henry Gist in 1922. This house, later a restaurant, toy store, and Tommy’s TV, remained standing into the 1990s.

On the north side of Garnet between Ingraham and Jewell, a former lemon ranch was acquired by the San Diego Army and Navy Academy for use as a parade ground and athletic field in 1925. The academy’s main campus occupied the blocks between Jewell and Lamont streets north of Garnet. The original academy buildings constructed for the college in the 1880s and renovated for the Hotel Balboa in 1905 faced Garnet. During the 1920s the Garnet Avenue frontage was supplemented by a stone arch, dismantled from the Isis theater downtown and reconstructed opposite Kendall Street in 1928, and in 1929 by a concrete triple arch over the academy’s main entrance at the northwest corner of Garnet and Lamont Street. The number of cadets had reached nearly 400 by the mid-1920s and the academy accommodated the growing numbers by building a number of 3- and 4-story reinforced concrete dormitory buildings along Lamont and Emerald streets between 1928 and 1930. A concrete auditorium/gym building was built in 1927 along Garnet west of the original campus buildings.

The property across Garnet from the academy was also a vacant former lemon ranch but in 1926 Robert Ravenscroft opened a new grocery store on one corner, across Jewell from the Presbyterian church, and a commercial block was built on the other corner, with Lamont. The Pacific Beach post office, a barber, a confectioner and a Nettleship-Tye real estate office initially occupied storefronts in the new commercial building. Ravenscroft’s new grocery was in a two-story building with apartments upstairs. Before moving to Garnet and Jewell he had operated a grocery at the southwest corner of Lamont and Grand Avenue since 1913. The post office, with Clarence Pratt as postmaster, had also been located at that intersection, at Pratt’s store on the northwest corner, and Pratt continued as postmaster in the new location at 1865 Garnet.

Also in 1926, Henry Saville had a house built at 1741 and a stucco building that served as a store and a restaurant was built at 1851 Garnet. The Saville home is actually still there, hidden behind the façade of a smog testing station. The restaurant at 1851 Garnet, later a bar called the Roller Derby Room, was remodeled in 1967 and became the Beef House, Pablo’s, and since 1985 the Broken Yolk restaurant. Major Peterson, the headmaster of the Army and Navy Academy, built a house at 1965 Garnet, on the south side east of Lamont, in 1922. Across the street, a small building at the northeast corner of Lamont and Garnet served as a real estate office. Two more gas stations were built at this end of Garnet, one at 2015 Garnet in 1927 and another at 1945 Garnet in 1929.

Growth in Pacific Beach and development along Garnet Avenue was limited during the 1930s. The entire country suffered the effects of the great depression but in Pacific Beach the depression was further deepened by the Mattoon Act, which was intended to fund development projects, like the Mission Bay causeway, by assessments on property owners in improvement districts that would benefit from the projects, like Pacific Beach. The Mattoon Act also included a provision that ‘pyramided’ delinquencies onto the next year’s assessment, meaning in effect that property owners that did pay their assessments would have the delinquent assessments of those who did not added to their assessment in subsequent years. Many property owners could not or would not pay the increased assessments, leading to a ‘death spiral’ of increased delinquencies and growing assessments until the county government engineered a bailout in 1937. The combined effects of the depression and the Mattoon Act had a negative effect in Pacific Beach; on Garnet Avenue 24 of the existing 76 addresses, nearly a third, were listed as vacant in 1933. The depressed economy was good for some types of business; the Ocean View tourist camp, a trailer park offering low cost housing, opened on the south side of Garnet between the beach and Mission Boulevard in 1938.

By the start of the 1940s, Pacific Beach had mostly recovered from the depression and the Mattoon Act, but had not grown significantly since the 1920s. Garnet Avenue was still a significant traffic artery but had seen little further development. The 1941 city directory listed 75 addresses on Garnet Avenue, including 7 gas stations and garages, 6 real estate offices, 4 restaurants, 3 groceries, 2 liquor stores, 2 barbers and a beauty shop, and only 4 addresses were still listed as vacant. Several of the businesses were housed in the brick Dunaway building at the northwest corner of Cass Street, which was also the community’s only drug store. Several other businesses and the post office were located in the other retail block, also built in 1926, at the southwest corner of Lamont across from the academy. The half-dozen blocks between these two centers of business were occupied by about a dozen businesses and another dozen homes. The academy itself had failed financially, unable to repay the construction costs of its large concrete dormitories, and in 1937 had been sold and renamed Brown Military Academy.

But things were about to change. In 1935 Consolidated Aircraft moved to San Diego and by 1940 had expanded into several large manufacturing plants along the Pacific Highway north of the airport to produce B-24 Liberator bombers as the country rearmed in anticipation of the coming world war. Tens of thousands of aircraft workers moved to San Diego to work for Consolidated, creating a serious housing shortage. In 1941 the federal government stepped in with temporary housing projects within commuting range of the factories, some of which were in Pacific Beach, and commercial home-builders also began development projects in Pacific Beach. The rapid growth in population led to a corresponding growth in the local economy, much of it centered on PB’s main street, Garnet Avenue.

To be continued.

In July 1887 the Southern California Breeders’ Association acquired San Diego Pueblo Lot 1797, a 160 acre half-mile square lot extending from what today is the intersection of Garnet Avenue and Mission Bay Drive at its northeast corner to the southwest corner of the Mission Bay High School campus. At the time this lot and Pacific Beach Company’s property to its west were entirely undeveloped, although the Pacific Beach Company would draw up a subdivision map and hold an opening sale of lots by the end of 1887. The Breeders’ Association announced that its lot would be developed as a racetrack and by September 1887 the San Diego Union reported that they were ‘pushing along operations lively’ in construction of their track and buildings.

The buildings would include a grandstand with a frontage of 150 feet and a depth of 32 feet, a three-story judges’ stand and a club house, a very fine and convenient structure 45- by 32-feet in size, with an attic, two towers and two large bay windows giving the front a very showy appearance. There would also be a shed 100 feet long for the accommodation of teams and fifty stables, each 14 by 14 feet in size. A tight board fence, eight feet high, would surround the track. A month later, in October, the Union reported that the grading of the track and the fence were almost completed, 30 stables had been finished, the grandstand was ready for painting and work would begin the next week on the club house.

The grandstand had apparently been painted by November 15, 1887, when the Pacific Beach Driving Park was the scene of a baseball game between the San Diegos and the Philadelphias, or Phillies, the same National League franchise that plays there today. That morning’s Union reported that the boys from Philadelphia had arrived on the evening train and the San Diego club would cross bats with them at the Pacific Beach racetrack.  The home team had been in training for several days and the game promised to be an interesting one.  Round trip train tickets and admission to the grandstand, with special accommodations for ladies, would be 75 cents. A special train would leave the California Southern station at 1 o’clock for the park.

The November 16 Union reported that the Philadelphia and San Diego baseball clubs had crossed bats the previous afternoon and the home team was most woefully beaten, 31 – 7. The paper explained that the visitors were athletes who made a profession of playing ball while the San Diego club was a new organization only lately put in the field and the members had practiced together but once. The game was played at the new driving park at Pacific Beach and about 300 lovers of the National game witnessed the exhibition, among the spectators being a number of ladies. The game was interesting only from the fact that the spectators had an opportunity to see a first-class club play on a San Diego ball field.

Pacific Beach Driving Park had been built for racing, however, and in April 1888 the San Diego Union reported that it was being put into condition for the spring meeting. The track, built entirely of ‘made ground’, had been pronounced a good track by prominent horsemen.  The clubhouse, a three-story building of 22 rooms, was just about finished. The Grand Opening of the Pacific Beach Driving Park under the auspices of the Breeders’ Association of Southern California would include three days of racing, May 1, 2 and 3, and $1,250 in purses.

According to the Union, opening day at the new racetrack was a good day for horses, and by noon a large crowd was ‘off for the races’:

The procession which passed through the gates at Pacific Beach Driving Park was a jolly and good-natured, and expectant throng of well-dressed admirers of horse-flesh – and the pools.  They were there, all of them.  Gentlemen of leisure and gentlemen of business.  Ladies too, in their brightest array of spring colors sat in their carriages, and the throng which filled the grandstand was a lively and interested one.  The broad track over which the racers were to fly was smooth as a floor, firm, fast and in fine condition as any race-course could be.

The Union’s report on the second day of racing also emphasized the makeup of the crowd, especially the ‘fair’ members:

From early morning until afternoon the motor trains bore out their loads of merry freight, and the road to the north along the bay, was lined with carriages laden with business men, beaux and beauty, bound for the races at Pacific Park.  Every man who could get away from the busy duties of city life and evade the rules of domestic remonstrances against the seductive attractions of the uncertain pool box, donned his brightest plaid, and with dustproof hat, departed for the track.  Many there were who pleased their wives and at the same time avoided all danger of a cross-examination by taking with them the fair members of the family to enjoy the pleasures of the day.  Long before the bell had sounded the summons for the contending steeds, the carriage space of the Driving Park was well filled with a variety of gay equipages, a happy throng of pedestrian spectators moved to and fro and the grand stand presented a picture of fashion and feminine beauty.  In fact, if not in name, it was “Ladies’ Day” at the races, and the fairest of San Diego’s fair were out in all their style and bright colors of spring costumes.

The third and final day of the first race meeting at Pacific Beach Driving Park proved irresistible, according to the Union, and found the largest crowd of the season at the Pacific Beach Driving Park:

Everybody was there that could get there, and they went without much regard to the manner of their going.  They came in the closed coaches, and in the open cars of the motor, and even crowded upon the flat-cars and came out with the band. Vehicles of all descriptions were brought into use, and a constant stream of carriages poured through the gates of the Park.  There were buggies, phaetons, tandems and more than one four-in-hand in the procession, and even the “one-horse shay” was not missing, while manly equestrians and lovely equestriennes added their skillful grace to the scene of motion.  It was a great day and all had come prepared to enjoy it, so that not a cloud arose to cast its shadow over the field of pleasure – at least not until the unforeseen contingencies of the race course began to drop like a moist blanket upon the spirits of the heavy losers.

A second race meeting was scheduled for the Fall of 1888 and as that meeting approached an advertisement appeared in the Union promoting not only the Fall Race Program!, Four Days of First-Class Racing! Including running races, trotting and pacing, but also Two Extraordinary Special Days!, a Ladies’ Day and the People’s Day, which promised to be ‘the two greatest days in the annals of sport on the Pacific slope’.

As the San Diego Union had promised, People’s Day on Sunday, October 28, 1888, was a great day in the annals of sport, at least for Pacific Beach.  According to the Union, nearly 7,000 people were in attendance (out of a total San Diego population of perhaps 25,000 in late 1888). The crowd first watched a series of footraces and a blindfold wheelbarrow race before a recess was taken at noon for luncheon, ‘served in excellent style in the clubhouse’.  After lunch there were a couple of quarter-mile horse-races before the ‘event of the day’, a mounted sword combat between Captain Wiedemann and the woman who called herself Jaguarina.

Captain Wiedemann was from Germany and a leader of the local Turnverein, a gymnastic movement popular among the German immigrant population in the nineteenth century.   According to the Union he weighed 185 pounds with a chest measurement of 43 inches and biceps measuring 15 inches, and had received a thorough training in fencing. Jaguarina was described as a famous swordswoman now at Ensenada who had participated in (and generally won) similar battles in the past (her fine French military cuirasse, of brass and copper, ‘still bears deep indentations, as marks of respect from Captains Davis, Jennings and Marshal, received in former contests’).

The Union provided a blow-by-blow description of the resulting battle, which was tied after twelve rounds, each contestant having scored five points (no points had been scored in two of the rounds):

When the trumpet called the contestants to the charge for the thirteenth and last time the score stood five to five, and this final attack ended with Wiedemann aiming a cut at Jaguarina in high carte, which she parried and, before he could protect himself, ‘the sound of Jaguarina’s blade was heard on his cuirasse from a vigorous and unmistakable cut in carte’ which ended the contest with a score of six to five in favor of Jaguarina. The victor at once doffed her helmet and cuirasse and received round after round of applause from those present, many of her more enthusiastic friends throwing their caps high in the air.  After a gallop round the track with her second, Jaguarina returned to her dressing room receiving the congratulations of her friends en route.

Pueblo Lot 1797 is located at the foot of Rose Canyon, which drains a wide area extending upstream to beyond Miramar. Rose Creek normally carries the runoff from this area through Pueblo Lot 1797 and into Mission Bay but the racetrack’s location on the banks of the creek made it vulnerable to flooding from winter storms. A particularly severe storm on December 16, 1889, caused extensive flooding that washed out bridges over Rose Creek and wreaked havoc on the track.  According to the December 17 Union:

The Pacific Beach racetrack was demolished by a stream that came down Rose’s Canyon and was deflected across the north side of the grounds across the track, in the neighborhood of the Judges’ stand.  It is estimated that fully one-fourth of a mile of the track has been washed away on the east side, and several hundred feet more on the west side at the grandstand.  The water at one time was five feet deep and backed up the hill to the Pavillion.  Several of the lower sheds, down near the private gates, were also washed down.

The Pacific Beach racetrack was never fully repaired after this flood and racing never entirely recovered, but crowds still came to the grandstand to enjoy other forms of entertainment.  In November 1891 the Union reported that fully 1,000 people visited Pacific Beach to watch as a great balloon flew skyward about 2,000 feet and ‘from that giddy height a woman and monkey descended by means of parachutes’.  A triple parachute jump involving a man, a woman and a monkey and a ‘monstrous’ balloon 75 feet high and 41 feet in diameter was held at the Pacific Beach racetrack on Christmas Day 1891.

In 1890 the Breeders’ Association’s title to Pueblo Lot 1797 was challenged in court and in 1893, after a number of judicial proceedings, the property came under the control of Frederick Schulenburg, a retired lumber magnate from St. Louis. However, Schulenburg died in 1894 and in 1897, apparently in response to unpaid debts, the court ordered his estate to sell it. The Evening Tribune noted what it called ‘A Rare Opportunity’ in January 1898:

Attention is called to the legal notice in this paper offering for sale the 160-acre tract known as the ‘Race Track’ in this city.  The sale, by the administrator of the Schulenburg estate, affords the opportunity of securing a fine acreage adjoining the elegant suburban ranch homes and lemon orchards of Pacific Beach. This land is capable of producing as equally fine orchards, and a portion has been pronounced the best of alfalfa land.  The improvements alone cost more than is asked for the place.

The Union reported in September 1898 that the administrator had sold 160 acres of land belonging to the estate to a Los Angeles man, Dr. J. Mills Boal, who intended to ‘plow up’ the racetrack and set out the property to trees.  However, in November 1898, the news was that Col. A. G. Gassen had outbid Dr. Boal and became the owner of the Pacific Beach racetrack. Gassen had been involved with the Breeders’ Association and also owned other property in the area, including the brickyard in Rose Canyon. The Union added that he would spend about $2,500 for improvements intended to make the racetrack and neighboring property a pleasure resort and summer home for himself and his family.  He was expected to set out about 2,500 eucalyptus trees, build a five-board fence around the track, clear willows and other unnecessary trees and bushes from the creek bed and put part of the land into grain and alfalfa.

In May 1903 the San Diego Union reported a rumor that Col. Gassen had sold the track to A. G. Spalding, the sporting goods magnate then living in Point Loma, noting that the track had at one time been one of the finest speedways on the Pacific coast but had fallen into disrepair and would have to be wholly rehabilitated to become what it once was. Albert Goodwill Spalding was a former professional baseball player who in 1876 had founded the A. G. Spalding & Bros. sporting goods company which made baseballs and, in 1877, the first baseball gloves, which he was one of the first players to wear. Spalding and his second wife, an ardent Theosophist, moved to Point Loma in 1903 to participate in Katherine Tingley’s Lomaland Theosophical community.

Although the rumor of the track’s sale was false, or at least premature, Spalding’s interest apparently inspired Gassen to consider rehabilitating the track. In June 1903 the Union reported that he was having the track overhauled and more stalls built in anticipation of reopening in the fall and winter.  Fifty or sixty fine animals from Kentucky and Illinois would winter there, with the possibility of many more joining them during the cold season. Gassen said it was ‘not improbable’ that there would be a number of meets involving the eastern and local horses. He did not expect that the track would require a great deal of work to put it in proper shape and the fence, which had been out of repair for some time, had been repaired and painted and the grandstand and judges stand had also been fixed up. A new organization, the Belmont Breeders Association, was incorporated and Gassen tried to convince the Santa Fe Railroad to build a siding to the track so that horses could be unloaded at the stables.

The first shipment of the eastern horses arrived in September 1903, but the big news, a few weeks later, was that Spalding had taken over the Belmont Breeders’ Association and the track and stables of the Pacific Beach racetrack. The name was to be changed to the American Saddle-Horse Breeding Farm and the track to be hereafter known as American Park.  The Tribune noted that Mr. Spalding had always been an admirer of the American or Kentucky type of combination gaited saddle and driving animals and ‘the breeding of this high class of horses will be the special purpose of the establishment’. However, the saddle-horse breeding venture was not successful and was abandoned later the same year. Although the newspapers had referred to Spalding’s take-over of Gassen’s Belmont Breeders’ Association as a purchase or buy-out, the transaction apparently did not include the racetrack property itself and there is no record of any actual transfer at the San Diego County Recorder’s office. Gassen had retained ownership and in November 1904 granted ‘all of that certain property known as the Pacific Beach Race Track’ and other property at the mouth of Rose Canyon to U. S. Grant, Jr., son of the Civil War general and former president.

The track continued to be neglected, although in March 1906 the Union reported that while not much had been done with the track of late years it was still in good condition. There was a club house and grandstand on the grounds, the latter having a good seating capacity, and the accommodations at the track were first class in every respect. However, in October of that year another Union headline announced that the Pacific Beach Track had been sold For $75,000.00; this time U. S. Grant, Jr. had sold Pueblo Lot 1797, popularly known as the Pacific Beach race track, and other adjoining property to Archibald Hart, who intended to divide the property into villa lots and city lots. In November 1906 Hart and others incorporated the Mission Bay Park Company to lay out, improve and beautify their acquisition, particularly that part known as the Pacific Beach Race Track. The racetrack itself was to be eliminated; beginning in early 1907 the railroad that had serviced Pacific Beach since 1888 and had originally circled around the track via what today are Mission Bay Drive and Garnet and Balboa avenues (all then called Grand Avenue) was realigned along the route of today’s Grand Avenue (then called Ivy Avenue), cutting through the area where the track had once been.

The map of the Mission Bay Park tract filed in February 1907 subdivided the property in much the same grid pattern as that of the Pacific Beach subdivision to its west, including extensions of Hornblend, Ivy, Thomas, Reed, Oliver and Pacific Avenues from Pacific Beach and new streets like Figueroa Boulevard, Magnolia Avenue and Bond Street. Curiously, the Mission Bay Park subdivision map did not include Rose Creek, a stream which flows through the center of the tract and during wet winters in the recent past had inundated much of it. Today the Rose Creek flood control channel runs through the subdivision on what was originally laid out as Pico Street.

However, the Mission Bay Park Company failed to effectively develop or market its tract and the only property sale recorded was for lots 6, 7 and 8 of block 29 and lots 1, 2, 3 and 30 to 33 of block 32, the locations of the actual structures remaining from the former racetrack; the judges’ stand, club house and grandstand. This parcel was sold in March 1907 to Ye Olde Mission Inn Company, a corporation set up in February 1907 by James H. Babcock and others. The clubhouse became known as the Mission Inn and a year later, in February 1908, it narrowly escaped destruction when volunteers using a garden hose and bucket brigade prevented fire at a nearby shed from spreading to the hotel ‘formerly used by the racetrack people as a club house’. One of the volunteers was former San Diego fire department chief A. B. Cairnes, who lived in a home overlooking the racetrack property and who naturally responded to the sight of smoke and flames. However, the Mission Inn caught fire again later the same year, in November 1908, and was completely destroyed.

Unable to interest prospective buyers in their tract, the Mission Bay Park Company transferred it back to U. S. Grant, Jr. in November 1908, minus the 1.25-acre Mission Inn property, which was auctioned at the courthouse door in February 1912. The structures remaining on the site were abandoned and fell into disrepair. The San Diego Sun reported in 1931 that the ruins of the grandstand and the stables were still to be found ‘almost hidden by the rank vegetation of two score years’.  Aerial photos of the area from 1941 show the outlines of some of the streets laid out in the Mission Bay Park subdivision map but little actual development and no trace of anything resembling the former mile-long oval racecourse.

The Federal Public Housing Authority took over much of the property of the Mission Bay Park tract in 1941 and parts of the Bayview Terrace Project for wartime defense workers and Bayview Terrace (now Barnard) Elementary School were built on the western portions.  The southern portion of Pueblo Lot 1797 eventually became Mission Bay High School, the Mission Bay Athletic Fields and the back nine of the Mission Bay Golf Course.  One structure from the track itself, a three-story wooden judges’ stand, remained standing and was incorporated into the Rancho 101 Motel on Pacific Highway (Mission Bay Drive) in 1947.  The motel (and judges’ stand) was finally demolished in 1968, eliminating the last remaining trace of the former racetrack in Pacific Beach. The block west of Mission Bay Drive between Magnolia Avenue and Hornblend Street where the club house, grandstand and judges’ stand once stood and where thousands of nineteenth century San Diego sports fans once gathered to enjoy races, baseball games, mounted sword combat and parachute drops is now (2020) occupied by an automobile dealership.