Tag: world war II

Skateworld’s historical World War II building.

Skateworld, with a few other small businesses in Linda Vista, occupies a historically important building that was designed to be the center of community life during World War II.

The Linda Vista Tenant Activity Building was dedicated on December 26, 1943 and stood at the center of the federally constructed Linda Vista Housing Project. The project provided 3001 dwelling units for aircraft and shipyard defense workers in San Diego during the war.

A historical plaque a short distance up Linda Vista Road provides more information about the government housing project. See past photographs of that plaque here.

The Tenant Activity Building was designed like a field house or drill hall and served as a hub for social events, clubs, and all-ages activities. It would later be considered for historic designation due to its role in supporting war-effort morale and its unique architecture.

You can read the 2011 Historical Resource Analysis (Technical) Report on the City of San Diego website by clicking here. The report contains a great deal of additional information, including photographs.

Here’s a circa 1952 aerial view of the Linda Vista House Project and its Tenant Activity Building from the report. The center of the building with its high barrel roof today provides a perfect, roomy space for roller skaters at Skateworld.

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Photos aboard Coast Guard tall ship Eagle!

People in San Diego had an incredible opportunity this weekend to step aboard “America’s Tall Ship,” the USCGC Eagle, which has been docked for a few days at the B Street Pier. Visitors were invited to explore the nearly hundred-year-old, 295-foot, three-masted barque, which is used to train future United States Coast Guard officers.

I took the opportunity to come aboard the historic tall ship myself, and I captured photographs of one amazing ship!

A number of interesting banners hang around the Eagle, explaining its history and current role in training future Coast Guard officers. Eagle is the largest tall ship flying the Stars and Stripes and the only active square-rigger in U.S. government service.

I learned a new batch of prospective officers had themselves come aboard a couple days ago. This week they’ll be sailing in the nearby Pacific Ocean. When the Eagle returns to San Diego, this new group of “swabs” will be considered honest-to-goodness cadets!

I must say all of the young people who are training to become officers were extremely friendly, polite and professional. The Coast Guard’s future appears to be in great hands!

Now enjoy my photos…

Welcome Aboard America’s Tall Ship.
USCGC Eagle is both a Coast Guard cutter and a barque.
The Eagle has over six miles of standing and running rigging, 23 sails, and more than 22,000 square feet of sail area that allow her to sail at 17 knots (19.5 mph).
Eagle was originally German, launched in 1936, and was operated by the pre-World War II German navy. In 1946, after the end of World War II, United States Coast Guardsmen sailed the Eagle to the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.
Originally, the Eagle trained German Navy sailors as Horst Wessel. It sailed to the Canary Islands and West Indies, and later, during World War II, on the Baltic Sea. She carried anti-aircraft guns, and her logs indicate that she fired at Allied and German aircraft.
A permanent Coast Guard crew of approximately 60 personnel maintain and operate the Eagle year round.
The Eagle gives officer candidates and enlisted servicemembers hands-on, teamwork-focused opportunities to lead, train and serve at sea…
The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut produces leaders of character… Nearly 300 high school graduates enroll annually…
Sail training offers…a unique and useful training experience. This includes learning the fundamentals of seamanship, weather, and nautical tradition…

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

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Memories of the Greatest Generation at Liberty Station.

An important exhibition of historical photographs is now on display at Liberty Station in Point Loma.

A new exhibit space, inside Liberty Station’s old Quarters D building, features photographs by famed World War II era photographer Edward Steichen and his colleagues. The free exhibition is titled Memories of the Greatest Generation.

The newly opened exhibit space operates as a satellite for the Maritime Museum of San Diego. The photographs are in the Maritime Museum’s collection.

Learn all about this exhibition by clicking here!

Historical photographs portray military ships, airplanes and personnel operating at sea in the Pacific Theatre during World War II.

Renowned artist Edward Steichen and his team of eight photographers were commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1942 to document the war. They were called the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. Over the next four years, most of their work would be aboard aircraft carriers. They created about 15,000 photographs.

Many of these excellent photographs are emotionally powerful. In my opinion, the best images include sailors, submariners and aviators, ordinary people doing their best in difficult wartime circumstances.

Should you look for the old Quarters D building (location of the Maritime Museum of San Diego’s new exhibit space)–it’s at the corner of Rosecrans Street and Dewey Road. Watch for Maritime Museum signs. You can find parking down the hill a short distance away.

Also, watch for friendly museum volunteers! They are pleased to tell you all about this great historical exhibit!

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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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Remembering the Holocaust in La Jolla.

The lead photo of this blog post is horrifying. It serves to remind us that we humans are capable of unspeakable atrocities.

An exhibition at the La Jolla/Riford Branch Library concerns one of those atrocities: the Holocaust.

RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust, through words written and spoken by local Holocaust survivors, biographies, artifacts and photographs, serves to remind us that horrors like this must be forever remembered and resisted by ordinary, kind-hearted people.

One way to cement our need to remember is to visit the exhibition and experience what life was like for Jewish people and others in Germany under the Nazis before and during World War II. The irrational hatred, persecution, mass murder.

Why must people act this way?

Life is short enough. Why not simply be kind?

Why on Earth would anyone want to murder over a million children?

RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust’s curator is Sandra Scheller, daughter of Holocaust survivors Ruth and Kurt Sax. She grew up in the South Bay of San Diego. She’s the author of Try To Remember Never Forget, and the creator of the documentary with the same name. Sandra’s TED talk, Keeping Memories Alive, has been used throughout schools as a learning platform for Holocaust education and TED Talk future speakers.

The exhibition is not only open to the public on the second floor of the La Jolla library, but many school children continue to learn an important part of history by visiting the extensive displays.

You can learn more about the exhibition and its Holocaust survivor speaker series by visiting the RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust website 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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Holocaust survivors speak at La Jolla library.

You have an extraordinary opportunity. Holocaust survivors and their family members have been speaking all year at the La Jolla/Riford Branch Library. See the above schedule. The next speaker will be at the La Jolla library on Tuesday, May 13.

The second floor of the La Jolla library is currently hosting the exhibition RUTH: Remember Us the Holocaust, which recalls the horrors of a nightmarish period in human history that no one should ever forget.

I blogged about this exhibition several years ago when it was showing in Chula Vista. See those photos here. I’ll be blogging about the current exhibition in La Jolla (which is even more powerful) shortly.

Meanwhile, please spread the word. Holocaust survivors will continue to recall their personal experiences the second Tuesday of each month. Bring your friends. This is incredibly important.

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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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World War II map remains in Balboa Park!

Balboa Park contains many surprises!

If poke your nose inside the Santa Fe Room of the Balboa Park Club building, you’ll find a large map on one wall. The old map is a remnant of the park’s fascinating history.

During World War II, the Palisades part of Balboa Park was turned into Camp Kidd Naval Training Station, a U.S. Navy facility that included hospital wards, training facilities and barracks.

The Balboa Park Club building, which had been the Palace of Education for the 1935-36 California Pacific International Exposition, was converted into a temporary annex to the naval hospital with a dispensary and mess hall. Here’s an interesting web page about Camp Kidd.

The building’s Santa Fe Room, with its map of The Pacific and Far East, became the Camp Kidd Officers’ Club. Visitors to the park today can view that same map–provided the room is open and not being used for a special event.

I had to increase the contrast quite a bit for my two photographs, to bring out more detail.

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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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Views from Coast View Parking at Cabrillo.

Few people enjoy the scenic view in the above photograph. That’s because the remote Coast View parking lot is seldom visited at Cabrillo National Monument.

The small parking lot can be found at the end of Cabrillo Road, just before the gate to the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. Most park visitors who drive down Cabrillo Road stop at Tidepools Parking and go no farther.

I recently posted a blog about my amazing hike up the Coastal Trail. I began from a spot near Tidepools Parking and walked north to Sea Cove Parking, where the trail ends. I didn’t mention that from the latter parking lot, I continued north a short distance along the side of Cabrillo Road, in order to reach Coast View Parking. That’s where these photographs were taken.

An overlook at the Coast View parking lot not only offers scenic views of the Pacific Ocean and sandstone bluffs, but there are information signs well worth reading.

Here I am carefully walking north along the side of Cabrillo Road…

I’ve arrived at Coast View Parking. There are benches where people can relax and gaze out toward the ocean.

A sign contains a poem…

“…The great rhythms of nature…have here their spacious and primeval liberty…”

Above the parking lot, up atop the Point Loma peninsula, one can see Battery Ashburn…

Embedded in the ridge in front of you was one of San Diego’s most important defenses during World War II. Well-hidden from approaching ships, Battery Ashburn housed two 16-inch guns…

Workers finished building the battery in March of 1944… Vibrations from the blast were so intense that they were rumored to have cracked windows in Hotel del Coronado across the harbor…

Turning east, I lifted my camera and took this photo of historic Battery Ashburn:

I then noticed a truck leaving the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, which handles sewage and gray water created by more then 2.2 million people who live nearby!

A beautiful day at Cabrillo National Monument, and a parking lot that few people visit…

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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.

Feel free to share!

Walking the Coastal Trail at Cabrillo National Monument.

The Coastal Trail provides an incredibly scenic walk at Cabrillo National Monument. It runs for about half a mile along rugged sandstone bluffs beside the Pacific Ocean.

The easy to moderate trail, with occasional steep steps leading up and down, begins by the park’s Tidepool Parking and winds north to Sea Cove Parking.

I asked a park ranger her favorite aspect of this trail. She loved how lines of pelicans soar along the ocean’s edge at eye level. I love that too.

I went for a walk along Coastal Trail the other day and took photos as I proceeded north. One comes to the tidepools very quickly. If you’d like a closer look at the tidepools, you can click here.

Starting north along the Coastal Trail near the Tidepool Parking at Cabrillo National Monument.
Map shows the Coast Trail and other parts of Cabrillo National Monument, which is located near the south end of San Diego’s Point Loma.
The scenic trail is very popular. Misty fog drifting in from the ocean is common.
The tidepools come into view soon.
Visitors like to pause and relax in this wide area just north of the tidepools.
Continuing north along the Coastal Trail, up then down some narrow steps.
Indescribable natural beauty.
A climb is coming up…
This stretch of steps is fairly long. I took it slow and easy. The steps are uneven in places.
Here comes something interesting…
This is an underground searchlight shelter from World War II. Visitors must safely stay off the unstable roof.
More stunning ocean vistas ahead as walkers proceed through native coastal vegetation.
The farther north you go, the fewer walkers you’ll likely encounter.
Brown pelicans soar along at eye level. Your spirit might soar, too.
Almost to Sea Cove Parking, also called Lot 2.
A welcoming bench at Sea Cove Parking overlooks vast beauty.

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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.

Feel free to share!

Adam T. Gastelum street sign in Barrio Logan.

Have you wondered about an Honorary Adam T. Gastelum street sign in Barrio Logan? I recently noticed it on Evans Street, at the intersection of Logan Avenue.

Curious to learn more about Adam T. Gastelum, I did a little searching.

An obituary summarizes several accomplishments of the proud Hispanic American Army veteran. He is credited with helping to found nearby San Diego VFW Post 7420. It also explains: Adam joined the Army to serve in World War II. His campaign battles included Normandy, Northern Ardennes, Rhineland and Central Europe.

I also discovered that on October 22, 2018, a San Diego City Council Resolution designated the 900 block of Evans Street between the intersection of Logan Avenue and National Avenue to be known as Adam Trejo Gastellum Street.

Many in San Diego appreciate his service.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 (formerly known as Twitter)!

Help solve an important San Ysidro mystery!

Photo courtesy Charlie Velazquez.

Your help is needed!

Do you have any old photographs taken years ago in San Ysidro? An effort is underway to reconstruct a World War II Memorial in San Ysidro, but more information is required.

147 men and women who lived in San Ysidro served in the military during World War II. Their names were listed on a memorial that stood in front of the old San Ysidro Library. But that memorial mysteriously disappeared, and now all that remains is a single photograph that shows only some of those names.

Here’s an article that provides a good explanation.

A group called the Friends of San Ysidro Luncheon Group has been attempting to ascertain all 147 names that were on the missing World War II Memorial, and they are still hoping someone out there has photos of it.

Do you know anyone out there who might have taken photographs in San Ysidro long ago? Your help would be greatly appreciated!

If you have any helpful information, please email Jack Gechter at jackgechter@cox.net.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

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 Twitter!