California's story begins here: Junípero Serra's 1769 mission on a hill, an adobe town under three flags, then a Navy port that armed the Pacific. Three days trace San Diego from Kumeyaay land to Cold War carrier decks.
California's first mission, founded by Junípero Serra in July 1769 and moved to this river valley site in 1774. The 1813 church, five-bell campanario and the Kumeyaay revolt story are covered in the museum and excavated foundations out back.
The hilltop where the 1769 presidio and original mission stood — the birthplace of European California. William Templeton Johnson's 1929 Spanish Colonial tower museum sits atop unexcavated adobe ruins, with Kumeyaay artefacts and Spanish cannon inside.
A 12-hectare preserve on a 'Ipai village site occupied for over a thousand years before contact, with bedrock grinding morteros, a reconstructed 'ewaa dwelling and shade ramada. Docents explain acorn processing and the Kumeyaay seasonal round.
The 1823 Rancho Santa María de Los Peñasquitos adobe, the oldest surviving private residence in the county, granted by Mexican governor Luis Argüello. Thick-walled rooms, a rammed-earth courtyard and the canyon trail past Kumeyaay grinding rocks.
The US Navy's longest-serving 20th-century carrier, commissioned 1945 and flagship of Operation Desert Storm. Sixty restored aircraft on the flight deck, the island bridge, brig, engine room and berthing spaces, narrated by veteran docents who served aboard.
A hilltop memorial whose 8-metre cross survived a 25-year church-state lawsuit resolved in 2016. Six concentric granite walls carry over 5,000 plaques honouring veterans from the Revolutionary War onward, with a 360-degree view to Mexico.
Marks Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo's September 1542 landfall, the first European contact with the west coast. The 1855 lighthouse is furnished as in the 1880s, and the WWII coastal artillery bunkers and radio station sit along the bluff road.
Terraced above the harbour on the site of Civil War-era Fort Rosecrans, with over 100,000 graves including the USS Bennington boiler-explosion dead of 1905 and the 1846 Battle of San Pasqual obelisk near the entrance.
San Diego's first two-storey brick building, completed 1857 by Thomas Whaley on the site of the public gallows where Yankee Jim Robinson hanged in 1852. Served as county courthouse, general store and theatre; original Whaley furnishings throughout.
Seven Victorian buildings moved here from downtown when 1970s redevelopment threatened demolition, including the 1889 Sherman-Gilbert House with its dovecote and Temple Beth Israel of 1889, the first synagogue built in San Diego.
Housed in the 1927 Chinese Mission building designed by Louis Gill, telling the story of the fishing and laundry community that built this quarter from the 1870s under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Courtyard garden and Chuang archive gallery.
The oldest structure in downtown, a prefabricated 1850 New England saltbox shipped around Cape Horn, now the museum of the Stingaree red-light district where Wyatt Earp ran three gambling halls in the 1880s.