By Ron James
It may not be much consolation to those of us who have been smacked silly by this edition of a recession, but the bite of economic hard times are not new for San Diego. It is part of our heritage and perhaps the curse of our future. Even our two most famous city fathers have felt the joy of the boom and the pain of the bust.
In 1850 William Heath Davis, a successful San Francisco merchant and ship owner, moved to San Diego with the idea of building a new city by the bay. Along with a few pals he bought 160 acres to build a new town. They cleverly called it New Town, although the folks back at the Old Town called it Davis’s Folly. Despite the name calling, the partners built a wharf and warehouse and made plans to build their new city. Then came the bust — a nasty depression in 1851 that wiped everybody out.
In 1867 another San Francisco merchant named Alonzo E. Horton sold all of his goods so that he could move to a dusty little town of San Diego. He, like Davis couldn’t figure out why the town of San Diego was located at the old Presidio, miles from the bay where the ships docked. He bought 960 acres for 27 1/2 cents an acre where downtown now stands.
This time “Horton’s Addition” as it became known, became a great success. And with the arrival of the railroad things boomed with get-rich-quick speculators buying up property as fast as they could — some locals were selling their place in line to buy property for as much as $500. The frenzy caused prices to go through the roof and some of the lots changed hands two or three times a day. (Think flipping downtown condos — sounds familiar doesn’t it?)
Then, the Santa Fe Railway decided to route most of the cross-country rail traffic through Los Angeles instead of San Diego and that sobered everyone. So another bust, and real estate values plummeted along with Alonzo’s fortunes. In 1887 the population of San Diego was 40,000 and by 1890 it was 16,159, according to the Journal of San Diego History.
San Diego survived that downturn only to wade through another 20 or so recessions, crashes, panics and the Great Depression. Despite those cycles, San Diego grew into a great city. So here we are, hurting a bit, waiting anxiously for the boom, but knowing in the back of our minds there will always be another bust to follow. Get used to it.
