Archive for July, 2016

The first issue of the Herald.

After surmounting difficulties and suffering anxieties that would have disheartened any but a live Yankee, we are enabled to present the first number of the Herald to the public. –John Judson Ames, editor, San Diego Herald.

San Diego’s first newspaper, the Herald, appeared on May 29, 1851, only twelve days after the first issue of the Los Angeles Star, the earliest newspaper in Southern California. The editor and publisher of the Herald was thirty-year-old John Judson Ames, a towering, six-foot six-inch “live Yankee” from Calais, Maine.

Read the story of John Judson Ames and the San Diego Herald.

Major General Leonard Wood, chief of staff of the United States army, gave the command . . . The first automobile in the desperate San Diego-Phoenix race shot forward with a bound. –San Diego Union, Oct. 27, 1912.

In the fall of 1912, San Diego challenged Los Angeles to a road race across the desert to Arizona. The story of The Great Race. 

Ed Fletcher behind the wheel of his 20 hp Franklin “race car.” Special Collections, University of California, San Diego.