Imagine yourself, if you can, as a youth, a teenager, living in “new” San Diego in 1879. It isn’t a very exciting life for someone your age, except maybe when the Pacific Mail steamship comes in at the long pier at the foot of Fifth Street. Although San Diego is the largest county in California, it is largely empty land. There are only a few thousand souls, including the native peoples, in its entirety from San Bernardino to the Mexican border. If you walk down the dirt street to the harbor in the early morning before school, you see the little waves on the shallow bay splashing on the sandy shore and maybe an occasional junk or other small fishing boat looking for a catch.
Across the bay, perhaps a little smoke rises from a campfire where a whaling party is camped on the Coronado peninsula. Other than the whalers, no one much goes there except to hunt jackrabbits among the sagebrush. Looking to the north, you can just see the lighthouse on Point Loma and traces of the old cobblestone fort. To the south is Mexico and the tiny hamlet of Tijuana and its even smaller American counterpart, Tia Juana. Turning about to walk home, over the rooftops of the scattered buildings are visible the hazy mountains of the Laguna range that make travel to the east so difficult. You feel stuck down here in this forlorn corner of the country, and you wonder why your father moved the family here in the first place, although he seems to have some secret knowledge that things are going to change for the better one of these days. If so, you wish he would share it with you.
That evening, after supper, your father relates to his family his views on the articles in that day’s San Diego Union newspaper, as is his habit. There have been several stories about the three Kimball brothers and their families who purchased the huge former Mexican cattle ranch in the South Bay, the Rancho de La Nacion. They had announced plans to form a city of their own to be called National City, and it seems that some families are locating there. Now it is stated in the paper that the local leaders have prevailed upon Frank, the eldest brother, to undertake the task of persuading some eastern bankers to finance a railroad line to San Diego.
Despite previous excitements and letdowns with other prospects, they are pinning their hopes on a Kansas company that is rapidly advancing toward Southern California. Although their stated goal is only to reach old Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory, the city fathers feel that, given sufficient incentives, they might be persuaded to come here. Your imagination is stirred! If only that could be! Trains coming and going from far places! One railroad could bring others, a whole network of rails to go anywhere. People from all over America are moving to fill up all those empty lands, even Coronado! Opportunities, fortunes to be made, if only it could happen!
The community is invited to join us for this month’s installment of the Coronado Historical Association’s popular Wine and Lecture Series on Thursday, April 16, about San Diego’s South Bay Railroads. Enjoy an engaging evening with Bruce Semelsberger, archivist at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum for over 40 years, as we explore how the opening of the California Southern Railroad in 1885 transformed San Diego and sparked the Great Southern California Land Boom of the 1880s. Discover how San Diego’s would-be rail barons set their sights on Coronado and the South Bay and find out what happened next in this fascinating chapter of local history.
The evening begins at 5:30 pm with a wine and cheese reception sponsored by Anaya Vineyards, followed by the lecture from 6 to 7 pm. Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1947, Bruce Semelsberger served in the U.S. Navy before building a long career in San Diego’s electronic component industry. His lifelong fascination with railroads led him to join the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in 1984, where he has served as Research Director, Librarian, and Archivist. Today, he continues collecting material for a book on San Diego’s early railroad history while researching and preserving the region’s rail heritage for future generations.
Tickets are available now at the museum located at 1100 Orange Avenue or online at coronadohistory.org. Tickets are $15 for members and $20 for non-members. Reservations are required, and please be aware that tickets are nonrefundable as proceeds support our educational mission. If you have any questions, please email [email protected] or call 619-435-7242.
