Unforgettable: Long Ago San Diego
LA BEATA: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part One) In the spring of 1878, Thomas Savage went to Santa Barbara to record recollections for Herbert Howe Bancroft’s massive History of California. In particular, …
You wonder if Alfred Huntington Isham knew his last name harbored a confession of guilt. Maybe he did. But given his dim view of human nature, and supreme confidence in his persuasive powers, maybe “I …
Depending on who tells the story, when Captain Charles Fitzallen sailed from Cardiff, Wales, aboard the Challenger in 1887, he had a bald spot either the size of a monk’s tonsure or the Great Globe …
They named a crater on Mars for Richard Anthony Proctor. The British astronomer (1837–1888) not only popularized his subject, he enjoyed making controversial claims: that there could be life on other planets; that the moon …
Last March 28, as the sun fractured behind iron-gray clouds, six Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet gazed in awe from Sacatone Overlook. Three miles east, on terrain bleak as Sinai, railroad trestles perch 1000 …
In 1803, Coronado’s North Island was a brown hump across the channel from the tip of Ballast Point. Ships entering the bay had to navigate through acres of kelp offshore, then a bottle-neck between the …
Another Boston trader anchored in the bay? That’s four in the last three years. What is this, a plague? And the captain will need wood, provisions. Or his ship may have sprung a leak and …
“Merchant navigators” — a polite phrase for “smugglers” — William Shaler and Richard Cleveland agreed on almost everything. Both were New Englanders, born in 1773. Both went to sea as teenagers. Shaler, whose ancestor Thomas …
After leaving San Diego the Betsy went south, cruising the lower California coast for furs. In a letter to his brother in Boston, Captain Winship boasted that he’d been stopping in Spanish ports, hoodwinking authorities.
I didn’t see the forest ranger who got trapped with the Marines,” recalled Colonel William Hastie, whose 10th Cavalry helped rescue burn victims from the Hauser Canyon Fire of 1943. “I heard he felt terribly. …
The Santa Ana winds died around 2:00 p.m. October 2, 1943. Hershel Higgins could finally drive his D7 bulldozer down into Hauser Canyon, where a 113-Marine crew was fighting what was about to become one …
In the fall of 1943, soldiers in San Diego’s backcountry had to stop gunnery practice before noon. After that, the heat became so intense the targets would seem to dance. On October 1 — the …
“Of all the dilapidated, miserable looking places I had ever seen, [San Diego] was the worst The buildings were nearly all adobe, one story in height, with no chimneys. Some of the roofs were covered with tiles and some with earth.”
The column tried to stay motionless to surprise Pico at Mule Hill. But Duvall, the Portsmouth's surgeon, found the camp “rather a bad place to escape observation, on the top of a high mountain destitute of trees.”
Kearny looked at Beale’s head wound, bandaged with a torn army shirt, and said no. Too dangerous. Beale argued that Kit Carson could be his guide. Kearny vetoed Carson. Carson was far too important to let go.
“Forty balls struck him, I was told,” says Griffin, “yet he did not fall.” Soldiers drove the mule up the hill and butchered it, along with two others killed in the rush. Three fat mules were a “godsend.”