TWHP


San Diego, The Mission   

San Diego was the first Spanish settlement founded by the expedition led by Gaspar de Portola, who was accompanied by missionary priest Junipero Serra. They built a military post and a mission in 1769, and it served as a port for the area's cattle-hide trade in later decades. The United States took it over in 1846 during the Mexican War, the California highlight of which was a bloody reversal suffered by General Stephen Kearney at the Battle of San Pasquale, some 30 miles distant from the settlement. Little more than a skirmish, the Mexicans nonetheless killed 25 of Kearney's men and wounded 17 out of a force of 121.

During the early years of statehood before the Civil War, San Diego was the central rallying point of large landowners--Mexican and American--who wanted to divide the state because they felt that land taxes unfairly burdened them in comparison to the northern economy based on gold mining and the ready cash it generated. The Americans involved typically supported slavery, a fact that did little to endear their cause to the more population-rich north.

In 1867 the modern city was laid out, but it took the arrival of the Santa Fe Railroad in 1884 to really stimulate growth, after which San Diego began to attain the proportions of a major city, greatly assisted as it concurrently became host to a major naval base.


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