57 Facts About San Diego

San Diego is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border.

San Diego is the second largest city in the state of California after Los Angeles.

In 1821, San Diego became part of the newly declared Mexican Empire, which reformed as the First Mexican Republic two years later.

Permanent European colonization of both California and San Diego began in 1769 with the arrival of four contingents of Spaniards from New Spain and the Baja California peninsula.

Mission San Diego was the southern anchor in Alta California of the historic mission trail El Camino Real.

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In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and San Diego became part of the Mexican territory of Alta California.

That same year San Diego was designated the seat of the newly established County of San Diego and was incorporated as a city.

Original town of San Diego was located at the foot of Presidio Hill, in the area which is Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.

From 1857 to 1860, San Diego became the western terminus of the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line, the earliest overland stagecoach and mail operation from the Eastern United States to California, coming from Texas through New Mexico Territory in less than 30 days.

Still, San Diego remained a relative backwater town until the arrival of a railroad connection in 1878.

In 1912, San Diego was the site of a free speech fight between the Industrial Workers of the World and the city government who passed an ordinance forbidding the freedom of speech along an area of "Soapbox Row" that led to civil disobedience, vigilantism, police violence, the abduction of Emma Goldman's husband Ben Reitman and multiple riots.

The city was an early center for aviation: as early as World War I, San Diego was proclaiming itself "The Air Capital of the West".

Downtown San Diego was in decline in the 1960s and 1970s, but experienced some urban renewal since the early 1980s, including the opening of Horton Plaza, the revival of the Gaslamp Quarter, and the construction of the San Diego Convention Center; Petco Park opened in 2004.

Outside of downtown, San Diego annexed large swaths of land and for suburban expansion to the north and control of the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

San Diego has since become a center of the emerging biotech industry and is home to telecommunications giant Qualcomm.

Traditionally, San Diego Diegans have built their homes and businesses on the mesas, while leaving the urban canyons relatively wild.

City of San Diego recognizes 52 individual areas as Community Planning Areas.

San Diego was originally centered on the Old Town district, but by the late 1860s the focus had shifted to the bayfront, in the belief that this new location would increase trade.

Currently the tallest building in San Diego is One America Plaza, standing 500 feet tall, which was completed in 1991.

San Diego has one of the top-ten best climates in the United States, according to the Farmers' Almanac and has one of the two best summer climates in the country as scored by The Weather Channel.

Under the Koppen–Geiger climate classification system, the San Diego area has been variously categorized as having either a semi-arid climate or a Mediterranean climate (Csa).

San Diego County has one of the highest counts of animal and plant species that appear on the endangered list of counties in the United States.

In October 2003, San Diego was the site of the Cedar Fire, at that time the largest wildfire in California over the past century.

The urban area of San Diego extends beyond the administrative city limits and had a total population of 2, 956, 746, making it the third-largest urban area in the state, after that of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Francisco metropolitan area.

San Diego was named the ninth-most LGBT-friendly city in the U S in 2013.

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In 2014, San Diego was designated by a Forbes columnist as the best city in the country to launch a small business or startup company.

San Diego recorded a median household income of $79, 646 in 2018, an increase of 3.

Economy of San Diego is influenced by its deepwater port, which includes the only major submarine and shipbuilding yards on the West Coast.

Military bases in San Diego include US Navy facilities, Marine Corps bases, and Coast Guard stations.

Military infrastructure in San Diego is still growing and developing, with numerous military personnel stationed there, numbers of which are expected to rise.

Sport fishing is another popular tourist attraction; San Diego is home to southern California's biggest sport fishing fleet.

In 2009 the Port of San Diego handled 1, 137, 054 short tons of total trade; foreign trade accounted for 956, 637 short tons while domestic trade amounted to 180, 417 short tons.

Qualcomm was founded and is headquartered in San Diego, and is one of the largest private-sector employers in San Diego.

San Diego has the U S headquarters for the Slovakian security company ESET.

San Diego has been designated as an iHub Innovation Center for potential collaboration between wireless and the life sciences.

In 2013, San Diego had the second-largest biotech cluster in the United States, below the Boston area and above the San Francisco Bay Area.

San Diego is home to more than 140 contract research organizations that provide contract services for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

The City of San Diego is responsible for police, public safety, streets, water and sewer service, planning and zoning, and similar services within its borders.

San Diego is a sanctuary city, however, San Diego County is a participant of the Secure Communities program.

Areas of the city immediately adjacent to San Diego Bay are administered by the Port of San Diego, a quasi-governmental agency which owns all the property in the tidelands and is responsible for its land use planning, policing, and similar functions.

San Diego is a member of the regional planning agency San Diego Association of Governments.

However, in more recent decades, San Diego has trended in favor of Democratic presidential candidates for president.

San Diego had represented California's 50th congressional district, which includes much of the northern portion of the city of San Diego.

From 1980 to 1994, San Diego surpassed 100 murders ten times before tapering off to 91 homicides in 1995.

In 2004, San Diego had the sixth lowest crime rate of any U S city with over half a million residents.

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In 2013, San Diego had the lowest murder rate of the ten largest cities in the United States.

The majority of the public schools in the city are served by the San Diego Unified School District, the second-largest school district in California, which includes 11 K–8 schools, 107 elementary schools, 24 middle schools, 13 atypical and alternative schools, 28 high schools, and 45 charter schools.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is located in La Jolla and has a branch located at the Santa Fe Depot downtown.

San Diego is home to one major professional sports team, MLB's San Diego Padres.

San Diego has other highest-level professional teams, minor league teams, semi-pro and amateur teams, and college athletics teams.

Also in the San Diego area are California State University, San Marcos of NCAA Division II and the University of Saint Katherine of the NAIA, both located in San Marcos, and San Diego Christian College of the NAIA, located in Santee.

Times of San Diego is a free online newspaper covering news in the metropolitan area.

Voice of San Diego is a non-profit online news outlet covering government, politics, education, neighborhoods, and the arts.

The San Diego Daily Transcript is a business-oriented online newspaper.

San Diego is the headquarters of national far-right cable TV channel One America News Network, which was founded in 2013 and is owned by Herring Networks.

Radio stations in San Diego include nationwide broadcaster iHeartMedia; Entercom Communications, Local Media San Diego, and many other smaller stations and networks.

In 2014, San Diego announced plans to become the first U S city to install cyber-controlled street lighting, using an "intelligent" lighting system to control 3, 000 LED street lights.