Coronado Apartment Reviews

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Coronado Information

The history of Coronado begins in the early seventeenth century when the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino caught sight of a group of islands seventeen miles off the coast of southern California and named them Las Yslas Coronadas. These men surveyed the territories now known as San Diego and Coronado yet failed to settle in the area. For almost 200 years the peninsula remained bare.

While still under Spanish control in the early nineteenth century, Coronado was used as a safe harbor by whalers who also began to build hide houses to carry out their work. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, land grants were issued for various sections of California, thus creating the grand rancheros and haciendas of this period. On May 15, 1846 a land grant was issued to Don Pedro Carrillo by Governor Pio Pico for "the island or Peninsula in the Port of San Diego." Carrillo's ownership of the land was brief as he sold the property just five months later to the American captain of a trading ship, Bezer Simmons, for $1000.00.

The peninsula changed hands several times over the next 39 years until it was purchased by Elisha S. Babcock, Jr., Hampton L. Story, and Jacob Gruendike, for $110,000.00 on November 19, 1885. Babcock then invited his brother-in-law, Heber Ingle, and Josephus Collett, a railroad stockholder, to become investors. Thus the founding fathers of what is today known as Coronado organized the Coronado Beach Company on April 7, 1886.

Work began immediately on the resort community that the Beach Co. investors envisioned. The men hired hundreds of laborers of various nationalities to begin the division and landscaping of lots, the laying of railroad tracks, and the construction of a water and irrigation system. In order to accommodate the growing number of people journeying to the peninsula, Babcock and Story created the San Diego and Coronado Ferry Company on April 16, 1886 with the ferry Coronado completing its first run on August 19th. Babcock and Story leaked news of a proposed hotel on Coronado to the local newspapers which caused a great deal of excitement in the community of San Diego and beyond. With the increased publicity surrounding this grand venture came new interest in the community planning of the peninsula. Thus on November 13, 1886 the Coronado Beach Co. held an auction for the sale of lots ranging in price from $500.00 to $1600.00. By the end of the day, the Beach Company had sold 350 lots for a total of $110,000.00, which was, incidentally, the purchase price of the entire peninsula.