The photo above, labeled, “View in Poway Valley,” appears in the book, Picturesqe San Diego. Authored by Douglas Gunn and published in 1887, Picturesqe San Diego offers historical snapshots, in both text as well as photos, of San Diego County as it appeared then. The book’s section on the Poway Valley (there was no incorporated city of Poway at that point) refers to the area as a “rich agricultural valley” with a population of “about 800” (compared to an estimated 48,000 in the city of Poway today).

The Poway Valley then had, according to Gunn, “as choice farming lands as can be found in any part of Sourthern California.” In addition to hay, grain, and various varieties of grapes, “Poway peaches are especially noted for size and flavor,” the book said, adding that “Bee-keeping is profitably carried on, a choice grade of honey being produced. Fine cattle are kept, and butter-making is a paying industry.”

The 97-page book includes 72 photos like the one above, showing a very different San Diego City and County from the ones we know today.

There are print copies of Picturesque San Diego available at a few local libraries, but only in-house in the reference area. There’s a downloadable copy available online on the  Internet Archive website at https://archive.org/ .Or you can check out my upcoming Oasis lecture, “Picturesque San Diego: Images and Stories From the Past,” on Wednesday, July 12, at 10 a.m. at the Oasis Lifelong Learning Center at Grossmont in La Mesa. If you can’t make it to Grossmont, I’ll be giving the talk again on August 11 at 10 a.m. at Oasis’ new Rancho Bernardo campus, one of a number of talks on various aspects of local history I’ll be giving in RB in July and August. For further info and to register, visit https://san-diego.oasisnet.org/ and click on “Classes.” Come join me for some San Diego history!

“The Week in Pacific Beach” was a regular column in the San Diego Union in 1905, and the column on Tuesday, November 7th, included this item:

“Oliver T. Parker and Captain Jonas Parker of Lowell, Mass., are frequently seen automobiling on the strand.”

The Parkers were not alone. Take a look at this postcard from the same year:

That image is courtesy of the San Diego Public Library, which has a collection of over 5,000 postcards. The introduction to the collection on the library’s website states, “In the past postcards were the original Social Network. It was the easiest way to share images and quick thoughts.”

Check out some of the San Diego history on display by going to: https://sdpl.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16736coll5 .

The photo below, courtesy of the Poway Historical Society. is labeled, “Old Poway Grade Taken in 1911”:

Commuters sitting in traffic snaking over the Poway Grade today might have a hard time imagining it as a dirt road where traffic jams once consisted of livestock, but that was the case a century ago.

The Poway Historical Society’s archives include the written reminiscences of Andrew Kirkham, a member of one of Poway’s pioneering farming families. One of his journals describes how, as a 14-year-old in 1898, he joined his father and brother clearing the Poway Grade’s roadbed of loose rocks.

“Whenever a flock of sheep drove down the Poway grade, there would be a lot of rocks rolled down onto the road,” Kirkham wrote. “These flocks would be driven to the northern part of the country in the springtime and return in the fall.”

The flocks numbered anywhere from 500 to 1,000 sheep according to Kirkham. Similar numbers of horses, cattle and hogs were driven over the grade as well

Gettin’ over the grade is just one of many aspects of North County history I’ll be talking about in my lecture, “San Diego North County-A Look Back,” on Tuesday, June 6 at 12:30 p.m. at the University Community Library in San Diego. The program is co-sponsored by the San Diego Public Library and San Diego Oasis. Come join us!

Below is a  clipping of part of the front page of the San Diego Union issue of March 20, 1871.

I clipped this excerpt, which appeared at the top of column 1, as a snapshot of San Diego history. Please note the “Vol. 1” in the upper left. I included that detail because this issue was “Volume 1, Number One,” in other words, the Union’s very first issue as a daily paper. Up to then it had been only published weekly. Douglas Gunn, whose name appears on the paper’s masthead as a co-publisher-proprietor with S.W. Bushyhead, had in 1868 purchased a small interest in what was then the Weekly Union. In 1871 he assumed greater financial and editorial control and took the paper daily as of March 20^.

Simultaneously with turning the paper into a daily, Gunn also moved the paper’s press from offices in what we today call Old Town San Diego to an emerging “New Town,”beginning to take shape closer to San Diego Bay.

The emergence of “New Town” is evident in the clip immediately below the paper’s masthead, displaying the “Business Card” of Alonzo Horton, who had purchased 900 acres in 1867 and begun developing it under various names including “Horton’s Extension” or “Horton’s Addition,” with the support of many in the then-small city (population less than 3,000), including Douglas Gunn and his newspaper.

The neighborhood’s name was still evolving, as evidenced a little over a week later, when the Union posted a legal notice in its April 1 issue from a state district court judge, then sitting in Los Angeles:

Sources for this post included historic San Diego newspapers, an August 2011 Union-Tribune article by historian Richard Crawford, and the 1887 book, Picturesque San Diego, With Historical and Descriptive Notes, by Douglas Gunn.

The photo at the top of this page shows Mule Hill, in the San Dieguito River Park. There’s a lot of history behind the hill and its name, which is one reason why I adopted it for the cover page of my blog. Mule Hill is also mentioned in two talks that I’ll be giving this month. On April 18th I’ll be speaking at the 4S Ranch Branch of the San Diego County Library. My topic will be: “What’s In a Name? A Lot of History.” There’s a story behind every place name, past and present, in San Diego County, and I’ll share some of those stories, from Mule Hill and Kettner Boulevard to a post office named Nellie, in my talk.

Then on Aptil 21st. I’ll be joining the folks at the Scripps Miramar Ranch Library where I’ll be  talking about “Picturesque San Diego: Images and Stories from the Past.” Picturesque San Diego is a book published in 1887 by Douglas Gunn, a former San Diego Union editor and former mayor of San Diego. The book is lavishly illustrated with photos of places throughout the county taken by one of the most prominent photographers of the day. My slideshow features many of those photos along with Gunn’s text describing a much more rural and much less populated county than the one we live in today.

The only thing I love more than visiting libraries is talking about history with other folks at libraries. Check out the county and city library websites for details on location and times and join us. If you can’t make it for these, I’ll be giving other talks in the months ahead. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out my blog posts as well as my books!