Tag: transportation

March of Transportation mural in Balboa Park.

Visitors inside the world-famous San Diego Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park should look up. Not only will they see amazing aircraft exhibits suspended from the ceiling, but they might notice a very long mural painted along the museum’s circular inner wall.

The March of Transportation mural was created in 1936 for the California Pacific International Exposition. At over 9,300 square feet, it’s the largest mural of its kind found in North and South America.

Because so many cool aviation displays are jammed into the museum, I found it difficult to photograph large segments of the mural. But I’ve captured several glimpses, so you can get the idea of how the art appears.

A couple years ago I photographed the very end of the mural, which depicts futuristic forms of transportation (as conceived almost a hundred years ago). You can see those photos here.

Several murals decorated the Ford Building during the California Pacific Exposition in 1935. After the Exposition, the Ford Motor Company deeded the building to the City of San Diego for use as the “Great Hall of Transportation.” In preparation for the 1936 Exposition, this large mural was commissioned to express the theme–“The March of Transportation.”

The 1936 “Great Hall of Transportation” exhibits included vehicles of all ages, from reed boats, to the locomotive, to the concepts of air and space travel. The mural, 18 feet high, continues along the inner circular wall for 468 feet…

Master Artist Juan Larrinaga served as the Art Director for the 1935 and 1936 Expositions. He was assisted by New York illustrator, Charles B. Falls, and artists P.T. Blackburn, Mahlan Blane and Nicolas Reveles. Larrinaga labored long hours to produced the drawings from the artist assistants to fill in. More than 40 persons eventually contributed their talent and energy to the completion of the mural.

After years of deterioration, the building began a restoration in 1977. In 1979 the mural, too, was restored.

While this artwork depicts world history, it is also an important part of San Diego’s uniquely rich history.

So go visit the San Diego Air & Space Museum . . . and look up!

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Archaic Passage at the Old Town Transit Center.

Travelers at the Old Town Transit Center might find themselves walking through an underground passageway. The tunnel safely crosses beneath the San Diego Trolley and train tracks. In this shadowy place curious eyes will encounter public art titled Archaic Passage.

Not in a hurry to catch your bus or other transportation? There are plaques on either end of the passageway that you can read. They provide information about this unique art…

“ARCHAIC PASSAGE”

COMMISSIONED BY SAN DIEGO METROPOLITAN TRANSIT DEVELOPMENT BOARD JUNE 1996

DESIGNED BY SAN DIEGO ARTIST PAUL HOBSON, “ARCHAIC PASSAGE” CELEBRATES THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF OLD TOWN, FROM NATIVE AMERICAN TO CONTEMPORARY TIMES. ART MATERIALS USED–CARRIZO CANE, WOOD, STUCCO, ADOBE, BRICK, CLAY ROOF AND DECORATIVE TILES–REPRESENT BUILDING MATERIALS USED TO BUILD OLD TOWN. EACH GEOLOGICAL STRATA-LIKE WAVE REFLECTS A SIGNIFICANT ARCHITECTURAL STYLE.

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AI images: San Diego 100 years in the future!

What will the city of San Diego look like 100 years in the future? I was curious how today’s generative AI might picture it.

I used the prompt “San Diego 100 years in the future” with the AI Drawing Assist on a Samsung Galaxy phone. The images that were produced were rather startling!

Futuristic buildings, exotic elevated walkways and new modes of transportation…but how realistic is it to believe such radical transformations could be made in only one hundred years? (Um…anti-gravity?)

Nevertheless, this is pretty cool!

I see identifiable aspects of the present city skyline are incorporated into images, as well as San Diego Bay. Notice how certain recognizable buildings are arbitrarily positioned or weirdly altered by the artificial intelligence?

I love how lush green vegetation sprouts everywhere including the roofs and sides of many buildings. I love how curvy and absurdly complicated some of the conjectured architecture is!

(Earlier this year, I performed a similar experiment. I used the term “Balboa Park at sunset” to produce generative AI images in the same way. The results were bizarre. This is what I got!)

Okay–now for today’s experiment. AI draws the future of San Diego…

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Assassins on a trolley! Gorilla on a bus!

If you plan to take public transportation in San Diego during Comic-Con 2025, take care! Because you might be joined by assassins on a trolley, or a gorilla on a bus!

A very cool new trolley wrap has appeared in San Diego that promotes Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming espionage series Butterfly. The spy-thriller will debut on August 13, 2025. It looks pretty cool. Here’s the show’s press release.

As far as a rampaging gorilla? His name is Donkey Kong! The bus wraps–I’ve noticed three different designs on the airport route going up and down Broadway–promote Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Bananza game on the new Switch 2.

Comic-Con is really coming to life in downtown San Diego! Stay tuned for much more!

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If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Building a chuck wagon at Escondido history center!

The Escondido History Center is always full of surprises!

Imagine my own surprise today when I discovered guys building an old-fashioned chuck wagon at the history center’s Bandy Blacksmith & Wheelwright Shop!

The retired volunteers, working on the project, let me step into the wheelwright shop to see exactly what they’re up to.

Check it out! The chuck wagon is being built from scratch and will be faithful to designs used over a century ago in the Old West. They hope to have it ready in time for Escondido’s 2025 Grape Day Festival, which will take place this September in Grape Day Park.

A chuck wagon is a horse-drawn wagon operating as a mobile field kitchen….They were included in wagon trains for settlers and traveling workers such as cowboys or loggers…

As you can see from my photos, this wagon is going to be awesome when finally completed!

First, here’s the old blacksmith and wagonworks building on the Escondido History Center‘s Heritage Walk, where the chuck wagon is being built…

Next is an old photo of a typical chuck wagon (without its cloth covering).

The guys working in Escondido will create a covering for their chuck wagon using duck cloth. You can see how the rear of the old chuck wagon in the photo has compartments used for storing food and cooking materials.

Now, inside the busy wheelwright shop today…

In the next photo, the wooden section that folds down near the front of the wagon is the foot board. The wagon’s seat will be mounted there behind it.

Next is the chuck box, which will be mounted to the rear of the chuck wagon. The combined cupboard and fold-down workspace stores cooking utensils, spices, and essential ingredients for cooking out in the field.

(Think of an old-fashioned tailgate party–featuring baked beans!)

The box-like pan boot is mounted under the chuck box. It typically held pots and pans and other cooking necessities such as a Dutch oven…

The opposite side of the chuck wagon under construction appears slightly different…

A barrel for water or other “liquid refreshment” will be mounted to this side!

The adjacent Penner Barn had its door opened by one of the friendly guys so I could take a peek inside…

The chuck wagon’s undercarriage is ready to go!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Gaslamp trolley umbrellas for Comic-Con.

San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) workers were testing a new development at the Gaslamp Quarter trolley station this morning. They were setting up that large umbrella in my photo!

I learned that during upcoming Comic-Cons and other similar events near the San Diego Convention Center, temporary umbrellas will be installed at the station platform to provide shade. One of the umbrellas, I was told, will shade a spot for police canines. Dogs can overheat in San Diego’s summer sunshine!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Unusual sight: two Dole banana ships in port!

Two enormous Dole container ships are in San Diego today: Dole Caribbean and Dole Chile. I don’t recall ever seeing two of these banana transporting ships in our port at the same time.

The two yellow ships are in my above photograph, plus a bunch of stacked Dole containers at the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal.

I suspect the Dole Chile came in on Sunday–that’s the usual ship arrival schedule. The Dole Caribbean has been docked in the same spot for many days now without any discernable activity. I’m not sure why. People I’ve spoken to surmise the ship is in disrepair. I can find nothing on the internet.

There’s an old Port of San Diego sign on the boardwalk between the Hilton San Diego Bayfront and the water. It describes the typical Dole operations…

Some interesting but possibly dated facts from the weather-beaten sign:

Dole is the 5th largest importer of containerized cargo into the U.S. after WalMart, Target, Home Depot and K-Mart/Sears. (You can see how old this sign is!)

Bananas and pineapples are packed in farms in Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala... After arriving in San Diego, the fruit is distributed throughout the western U.S. and Canada.

Each vessel holds 762 refrigerated containers… Each 40′ container holds close to 1000 boxes of bananas… 2.5 billion bananas and 40 million pineapples arrive at the Port of San Diego each year.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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La Jolla church used to be a train station!

If you drive up La Jolla Boulevard, just north of Bird Rock, you might see the impressive building in these photographs.

When I visited the La Jolla Historical Society a while back, I learned something very surprising. This ornate building–the main chapel for the La Jolla United Methodist Church–was once a railroad station and power substation for San Diego Electric Railway, the San Diego streetcar line established by John D. Spreckels!

I’ve found several great articles concerning this history. Here and here and here.

The 1924 Spanish Colonial architectural style San Carlos Train Station served streetcar Route 16, which ran from San Diego to La Jolla. Route 16 was the San Diego Electric Railway’s last major rail line expansion. In addition to downtown San Diego and La Jolla, the route included stops in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. The streetcars ran through 1940.

The San Carlos terminal building would then be used for several years as an art school. In 1954, the La Jolla United Methodist Church bought the building.

Check out the first and third links above for a few old photographs. You’ll see how the train station and substation stood alone in undeveloped land a century ago.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Hammering railroad spikes in downtown San Diego!

When I think of railroad workers manually driving spikes with hammers, I think of black-and-white photographs of workers laying tracks across deserts and mountains in the 19th century. I imagine the hammering of that Golden Spike, joining the rails of the first transcontinental railroad.

Well, here in downtown San Diego, in this high technology 21st century, a group of railroad workers were using spike mauls today to hammer (you guessed it) good, dependable spikes!

Tracks that support the Amtrak Surfliner, North County Transit District’s Coaster, and freight trains are undergoing maintenance this weekend. (I saw a big tamping machine in the distance, which is used to pack ballast under the tracks.)

The last time I saw a person swinging a spike maul, a John D. Spreckels impersonator was hammering a Gold Spike at the 100th Anniversary of the San Diego and Arizona Railway event in Campo. See those fun photos by clicking here!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Help solve a Carlsbad mural mystery!

I’ve no doubt someone out there has the solution to this mural mystery in Carlsbad!

I’ve done some online research but can find nothing about this old-fashioned mural on a wall beside the 2742 State Street building, which is home to Lofty Coffee Company.

The mural is very faded and partly obscured. I’ve greatly increased the contrast of the above photograph to help bring out the design and colors.

The painted mural centers on the historical Carlsbad train station and shows a steam locomotive on the nearby track. A horse is hitched to a cart advertising Village Limousine Service. Was that an actual business in Carlsbad?

Who created this nostalgic mural? When?

How much of the artwork is hidden by the adjacent building? Why is the standing wall that it was painted on seemingly preserved–the wall appears to be separate from the buildings on either side.

Please leave a comment if you know anything! I’m sure many readers would love to learn more about this engaging old public art!

UPDATE!

James R Dean on my Facebook page stated:

Its our guess that the lady who owned it prior (antique store) would know. The entire building was once all part of same mural. Very cool lady, shes still around. In the early 90s my mom found my toy chest there. (one of 3 made for family by my grandfather). I bought it and later had children who used it. My guess is this was painted in 80s and they left the one to keep some of the art.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Thank you for sharing!