Posts Tagged ‘Mission Valley’

San Diego by nature offers the finest spot in the United States for tourists. And tourism is our largest non-government business. [Mission] Valley is part of the Planning Department’s future plan for the tourist, and we are considering throwing it down the drain . . . –Arthur Jessop, downtown merchant, June 26, 1958.

Controversial decisions in city planning are not new in San Diego but perhaps no action has ever been more consequential than a City Council vote in June 1958 to rezone 90 acres of farmland along Interstate 8–a decision that green-lighted construction of the Mission Valley Shopping Center.

Read May Co. Comes to Mission Valley.

Mission Valley Shopping Center opens, February 20, 1961.

The dairy industry was once big business in San Diego. In the 1950s, dairy products were the third largest agricultural product in the county. One in fifteen San Diegans were connected in some way to dairying, according to one estimate. Mission Valley, today’s center of shopping malls and condominiums, was filled with dairy farms.

It began in the 1880s . . . the Dairies of Mission Valley.

Before freeways, sports stadiums, and shopping malls. Special Collections, San Diego Public Library

“A big rain is coming,” predicted Henry Cooper, Escondido’s celebrated, amateur weather prognosticator. The Escondido Weather Prophet, as he was known, spoke in early February 1927, predicting a major storm for later in the month. “We shall have copious rains all along the coast,” Cooper declared, “with assured runoff from a heavy mantle of snow in the mountains.”

Read the story of one of San Diego’s biggest rain years: the Flood of 1927.

Mission Valley under water, Feb. 1927.

Not even Yankee Stadium or Boston’s Fenway Park can surpass the comforts and conveniences of the Padres’ new home . . . This is a real ballpark, built for the game of baseball, a ballpark in which the city of San Diego can take great pride.  –Jack Murphy, San Diego Union

Read about the fondly remembered Padres stadium in Mission Valley: Westgate Park.

Westgate Park photo courtesy Bill Swank