Archive for January, 2013

San Diego Evening Tribune, June 6, 1913.

The city awoke this morning in a climate apparently transplanted. Shivers ran where shivers had not run before and the weather bureau was bombarded from early morn with telephone calls to know the reason why. Lightly constructed “Southern California” houses shrank with the cold and fairly trembled with the quivering of their occupants.  –San Diego Evening Tribune, January 6, 1913.

The story of the 1913 Big Freeze.

Back in May 1991, San Diego Union reporter Roger Showley wrote a nice piece on local history books, which included a valuable list of favorite titles nominated by local historians (list attached here: Favorite Books).

That was 22 years ago. How about we update that list?  This doesn’t have to be limited to professional historians.  Let’s hear from students and history buffs, too.

What I’d like to know is simply:

a. What are your favorite San Diego history books (perhaps your top five?)

and

b. Why do you like these books?

You can leave a comment below or send me an email at r-crawford@cox.net. I’ll give you all a couple of weeks then I’ll post the results on this site.

In 1960, Long Beach entrepreneur Allen Parkinson (inventor of Sleep-Eze) had a clever idea to speed people across the international border at San Ysidro.  Partnering with Tijuana businessmen, Parkinson would build a mile-long aerial tramway to whisk passengers across the line in a Disneyland-style skyride.  Regrettably, the scheme fizzled, but not before San Diego architect Frank L. Hope  produced this fascinating rendering.

Special Collections, San Diego Public Library.