Something New: San Diego's Old Town
November 25, 1996
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Old Town Tour - 882k QuickTime Movie
For most of its history, San Diego was ruled by Spain and then Mexico. Part of that past can be glimpsed in Old Town, a few miles north of downtown, where the city was born.
It was here on Presidio Hill in 1769 that Spanish settlers established California's first mission. Fifty years later, settlers began building small adobe homes at the foot of the hill, and in 1834 the town of San Diego was born -- with a skyline very different from the one today. In the 1860s, a businessman planned a "New Town" closer to the city's wharf, which is now today's downtown.
Meanwhile, Old Town San Diego has become a state historic park containing some of the original adobe houses, museums, shops and restaurants. Nearby lies a fort, and the mission that replaced the original. Every afternoon, the park's visitor center offers free walking tours of the most interesting adobe houses.
A major attraction in Old Town is Casa de Estudillo, which has been restored to resemble the home of a wealthy family in the 1870s.
"The beams that you see up in the ceiling are all bound and tied with rawhide and this is just the way it was done originally," points out Diane Powers, who's in charge of the historic site. Also on display is the kitchen, with tools once used to grind corn and bake bread.
The Bazaar del Mundo next door has Mexican restaurants, craft shops and regular performances by the Hispanic Mexican Ballet and other troupes. The dances and costumes are authentic.
Overlooking Old Town on Presidio Hill is a Spanish-style building which contains the Junipero Serra Museum, dedicated to the man who founded the missions of California. The building also has a tower from which you can survey a beautiful view, and historic photographs, allowing you to compare the past with the present.
Mission San Diego is six miles north of the original mission built atop Presidio Hill. Father Junipero Serra began the mission in 1769.
"On the first day, he hung a bell from a tree, built a simple altar and said mass and dedicated San Diego as the first of the California missions," explains Janet Bartel of the Old Mission Basilica Historical Society.
Father Serra would go on to build a string of 20 more missions up the California coast, each a day's walk from the next.
Because water and fertile soils were scarce, the mission was moved and a new building built in 1774. But barely a year later, hundreds of Kumeyaay Indians burned it down. A pastor was killed. "He became California's first Christian martyr," says Bartel. "He's buried under the altar of the church today."
Serra, whose approach to the Indians is criticized today, oversaw the mission's reconstruction. The new building was damaged in an 1803 earthquake, although some of the original adobe bricks remain.
The mission has a small museum with crafts and historical objects, including the cross Father Serra held at his death. There is also a re-creation of his living quarters. The garden has two small crosses which mark the graves of Native American converts -- the oldest such cemetery in California.
Mission San Diego is still an active parish church. Mass is said twice daily.
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