San Diego

The old lighthouse survived by being useless. After it went dark in 1891 the outbuildings disappeared and vandals carried pieces of it away, and in 1913 the commanding officer at Fort Rosecrans recommended it be torn down. It stayed because the view from the tower had made it popular with visitors. That same year a presidential proclamation set aside the half-acre around it as Cabrillo National Monument — not to protect the lighthouse but to clear the ground for a 150-foot statue of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, proposed by an organisation called the Order of Panama. The statue was never built and the Order eventually dissolved. The monument exists because of a monument that never arrived.

San Diego became California's first Spanish settlement in 1769, when a mission and a fort were established here, and the ground it happened on is Kumeyaay ancestral land. California State Parks says so directly on the Old Town park page and carries an outdoor exhibit, Iipay ~ Tipai Kumeyaay Mut Niihepok, Land of the First People. The settlement passed to the Mexican government, then to the United States after the Mexican-American War, which is why the park interprets a Rancho period and an American frontier on the same few blocks.

The weather here has a season that catches drivers out. Late spring and early summer bring a marine layer that can sit over the coast all day while the inland valleys are clear, so a June morning at the beach and a June morning an hour east are not the same trip. The practical effect is that the coastal attractions and the desert ones inland run on different calendars: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest state park in California, is a cool-season and wildflower destination, while the coast is at its greyest when the inland desert is at its most pleasant.

Cabrillo National Monument sits at the end of Point Loma, on the half-acre set aside in October 1913. The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is a Cape Cod design with the tower built through the middle of a two-storey dwelling, put into service on 15 November 1855. The builders, a Baltimore firm, disliked the site because reaching it meant building a road and bridges, and the water for the mortar and plaster was hauled from a well at La Playa about seven miles away. A first-order Fresnel lens was ordered for the tower; records show a third-order lens was installed instead. Entry is $20^* per private vehicle and the pass is good for seven days.

*Fees subject to change, please check nps.gov for updated information.

Cafe Coyote has been in Old Town since August 1989. Its own account says the founders met playing tennis in San Diego, lived above the restaurant for five years, and grew it from a thirty-seat room with ten employees to one seating over eight hundred with more than two hundred staff. It opens for breakfast, lunch and dinner 364 days a year, and tortillas are made by hand on the premises. The restaurant also claims Best Mexican twenty years running and Restaurateur of the Year for 2008; both are its own claims rather than figures from an outside body.

Phil's BBQ has been selling mesquite-grilled baby back and beef ribs since 1998. The business says it has gone from four employees to well over four hundred and has served more than a million gallons of its own barbecue sauce, and that the original Mission Hills location moved in 2007 to a larger space in Point Loma, which puts it on the same peninsula as Cabrillo. Its own description of the experience is “organized chaos,” and it names the long lines as part of it.

56 breweries within 10 miles of San Diego, 18 of them brewpubs with a kitchen.

Brewpub locations from Open Brewery DB (MIT)

*Fees subject to change, please check parks.ca.gov for updated information.

4 more Highway Heads places lie within about 180 miles of San Diego in a straight line — far enough that most are a night away rather than an afternoon.

• SoCalCaliforniaabout 90 mi
• Los Angeles/HollywoodCaliforniaabout 110 mi
• Getty CenterCaliforniaabout 120 mi
• Hollywood SignCaliforniaabout 120 mi

The gate times at Cabrillo are hard, not approximate. The Park Service states that the main gate closes at 5:00 PM, that all visitors must leave then, and that access before 9:00 AM and after 5:00 PM is not allowed. A plan built around light on the water at either end of the day does not work at this park.

On transit, paying cash costs you more than the fare. Metropolitan Transit System one-way fares bought through the PRONTO card or app include unlimited transfers for two hours and count toward a fare cap; MTS states that cash one-way fares get neither. An adult one-way is $3^* and an adult day pass $6^*. Buses need exact change, trolley machines give up to $5^* in change, and day passes are no longer sold on buses at all.

Balboa Park being open is not the same as the museums being open. The park covers 1,200 acres and holds seventeen museums, and its own visitor site says venue and restaurant hours vary and asks visitors to check each location before arriving. Admission is charged per institution rather than for the park.

Beach lifeguard cover is a question for the city, not for us. The City of San Diego runs its own Lifeguard Services and its advice to visitors is to swim near a lifeguard. We were unable to confirm from the city's site which beaches are staffed, or in which months, so anyone planning to swim should ask the city rather than assume a tower is occupied.

*Fees subject to change, please check sdmts.com for updated information.

*Fees subject to change, please check midway.org for updated information.

*Fees subject to change, please check missionsandiego.org for updated information.

Cabrillo National Monument

Address

1800 Cabrillo Memorial Drive, San Diego, CA 92106

Hours

9:00 AM to 5:00 PM daily; closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. No public access before 9:00 AM or after 5:00 PM.

Admission

$20 per private vehicle, $15 per motorcycle, $10 per person on foot or bicycle; each valid 7 days. Cabrillo annual pass $35.^*

Reservations

No timed-entry reservation is listed for park entry.

Old Town San Diego State Historic Park

Visitor centre and selected museums 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM; museums closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Telephone (619) 220-5422. Park car parks are free for up to four hours.

Link

https://www.nps.gov/cabr/index.htm

*Fees subject to change, please check nps.gov for updated information.

We checked fees, opening hours, closures and operating status on 2026-11-03. These change without notice — confirm with nps.gov, midway.org, missionsandiego.org, parks.ca.gov, sdmts.com, balboapark.org, sites.astro.caltech.edu and sandiego.gov the week you travel.

Straight-line distance from San Diego, not drive time.

• San Diego International (SAN) — 2 miles
• Brown Field Municipal (SDM) — 14 miles
• McClellan-Palomar (CLD) — 29 miles