San Diego

San Diego is a city in southern California, on San Diego Bay by the Pacific coast just north of the border with Mexico. It takes its name from Saint Didacus of Alcalá, after whom the explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno named the bay.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into the bay in 1542, the first European to reach the west coast of what became the United States. In 1769 Junípero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first of the Spanish missions of Alta California, beside a presidio on a hill above the river. The town passed to Mexico and then to the United States in the 19th century, and in the 1860s Alonzo Horton bought land by the bay and laid out a new town, the present downtown. The United States Navy built its Pacific bases around the bay in the 20th century, and an exposition of the 1910s left Spanish Colonial Revival buildings in the city park.

Qualcomm, founded in San Diego, designs the Snapdragon chips used in smartphones. Illumina, also based in the city, makes the machines that read DNA for laboratories and hospitals. General Dynamics NASSCO builds cargo ships and supply ships for the Navy at its shipyard on the bay.

Balboa Park holds museums, gardens and theaters in buildings with Spanish towers and tiled domes. The San Diego Zoo, inside the park, began with animals left over from the exposition and became known for its giant pandas and its work with endangered species. La Jolla, a district on the coast to the north, has sea caves and beaches where sea lions rest on the rocks. The USS Midway, an aircraft carrier moored downtown, is a museum with restored planes on its flight deck.