San Diego - geography.

« Qualcomm Stadium is the home of the San Diego Chargers, playing major league football.

PETCO Park is the home of the San Diego Padres, playing major leaguebaseball.

Major sporting events in the city include a professional golf tournament in February, hydroplane races on Mission Bay in late summer, and the Holiday Bowlpostseason college football game in December. VI ECONOMY The total value of all the goods and services produced in San Diego make it one of the most powerful economies in the world.

The key to San Diego’s economic successis its diversity, with a healthy mix of manufacturing, trade, tourism, fishing, and agriculture.

An important component of the economy is the presence of numerousfacilities of the U.S.

Navy.

Leading manufactured products include electronic and electrical equipment, aircraft, and industrial machinery.

The city is also home to a largenumber of biotechnology firms and communications companies.

Import and export trade with Mexico is of growing importance to the city, spurred by the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement.

San Diego County also ranks highly among the nation’s most productive agricultural counties, and leads all others in the production ofavocados. Military installations in the area include the San Diego Naval Station, the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego Naval SubmarineBase, and numerous training, command, and logistic facilities.

The United States Marine Corps operates the massive Camp Pendleton to the north of the city.

Formed in1962, the Port of San Diego handles a wide variety of maritime cargoes, berths cruise ships, and operates the San Diego International Airport. San Diego is an important transportation center, served by three interstate freeways and several federal and state highways.

The Metropolitan Transit System operatesbuses, ferries, and a downtown trolley line.

The historic Santa Fe Depot is the Amtrak terminal.

Northwest of downtown is San Diego International Airport, also known asLindbergh Field. VII GOVERNMENT San Diego is governed by an eight-member city council and a mayor.

The voters of San Diego elect the council members in district elections and the mayor on acitywide basis.

All serve four-year terms.

The council appoints a city manager to serve as chief administrative officer.

The city of San Diego is also the seat ofgovernment of San Diego County, governed by a five-member board of county supervisors. VIII HISTORY The San Diego area has been inhabited for thousands of years.

The first people lived in small bands and harvested the natural abundance of the land and sea.

Spanishmissionaries named these Yuman-speaking people the Diegueño. European contact began in 1542 when Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain, arrived in San Diego Bay.

Permanent European settlement didnot occur until 1769 when Junípero Serra, a Franciscan missionary, and Gaspar de Portolá, the governor of Baja (lower) California, founded Mission San Diego de Alcaláand a presidio.

This constituted the first Spanish settlement in what is now the state of California. San Diego, as the settlement came to be known, was under Mexican rule from 1821 until it was captured by U.S.

armed forces during the Mexican War (1846-1848).

Itincorporated as a city in 1850. Entrepreneur Alonzo Horton vitalized the area in 1867 when he began developing land south of the original settlement.

Following a devastating fire in 1872, settlers andbusinesses migrated to Horton’s “New Town.” The area boomed following the arrival of the first railroad in 1885.

Three years later, the Hotel del Coronado opened forbusiness. San Diego grew steadily during the early 20th century.

By 1910 the city had 40,000 inhabitants.

San Diego hosted the Panama-California Exposition (1915-1916) andthe California Pacific International Exposition (1935-1936), international fairs that brought worldwide attention to the city. The two world wars in the first half of the 20th century contributed to the military importance of San Diego.

Naval bases were constructed and local defense industriesexpanded production.

The aircraft and electronics industries became leading employers.

By 1950 the city’s population had climbed to 334,387.

During the followingdecade San Diego’s population grew by a remarkable 71 percent. Several slumps in the aerospace industry prompted a move to diversify the local economy.

The biggest jolt came in the early 1990s.

Reduced spending for defense, aresult of the end of the Cold War, hit San Diego’s aerospace industry particularly hard.

Local employment in aerospace plummeted from 27,800 in 1989 to only 9,300 in1995.

The region benefited, however, through the closure of military installations elsewhere in the nation and the reassignment of functions to bases in the San Diegoarea. One of the area’s unsolved problems is the high cost of living.

In the 1990s it cost about one-fifth more than the national average to live in San Diego.

In 1997 the cityadopted an innovative approach toward balancing growth and conservation.

Some undeveloped sections of land, primarily in the city’s eastern side, will be acquired andpermanently set aside to protect wildlife and plants.

In exchange other sections of land will be freed for unrestricted development.

The agreement aims to preservesome of the region’s most important habitat while meeting the housing needs of a growing population. In October 2007 San Diego County became the center of one of the largest evacuations in California’s history as a series of wildfires in and around San Diego Countyforced state officials to order the evacuation.

About a half million people were under mandatory evacuation orders.

Many of the evacuees were given refuge atQualcomm Stadium in the city of San Diego.

By the time the fires were largely under control, seven people had died and nearly 3,000 structures, mostly private homes,had been destroyed. Contributed By:James J.

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