Driving Around Downtown San Diego, California at Night in 4k Video

San Diego's name can be traced back to the 16th century when Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno bestowed it upon the area in 1602. He named the bay and the surrounding area "San Diego de Alcalá" in honor of Saint Didacus of Alcalá.

The state of California was admitted to the United States in 1850. That same year San Diego was designated the seat of the newly established County of San Diego and was incorporated as a city.

The original town of San Diego was located at the foot of Presidio Hill, in the area which is now Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. The location was not ideal, being several miles away from navigable water at its port at La Playa.

In 1850, William Heath Davis promoted a new development by the bay shore called "New San Diego", several miles south of the original settlement; however, for several decades the new development consisted only of a pier, a few houses and an Army depot for the support of Fort Yuma.

In the late 1860s, Alonzo Horton promoted a move to the bayside area, which he called "New Town" and which became Downtown San Diego. Horton promoted the area heavily, and people and businesses began to relocate to New Town because its location on San Diego Bay was convenient to shipping. New Town soon eclipsed the original settlement, known to this day as Old Town, and became the economic and governmental heart of the city. Still, San Diego remained a relative backwater town until the arrival of a railroad connection in 1878.

During World War II, San Diego became a major hub of military and defense activity, due to the presence of so many military installations and defense manufacturers. The city's population grew rapidly during and after World War II, more than doubling between 1930 and 1950.

During the final months of the war, the Japanese had a plan to target multiple U.S. cities for biological attack, starting with San Diego. The plan was called "Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night" and called for kamikaze planes filled with fleas infected with plague to crash into civilian population centers in the city, hoping to spread plague in the city and effectively kill tens of thousands of civilians. The plan was scheduled to launch on September 22, 1945, but was not carried out because Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.

From the start of the 20th century through the 1970s, the American tuna fishing fleet and tuna canning industry were based in San Diego, "the tuna capital of the world". Due to rising costs and foreign competition, the last of the canneries closed in the early 1980s.

The largest sectors of San Diego's economy are defense/military, tourism, international trade, and research/manufacturing.

The economy of San Diego is influenced by its deepwater port, which includes the only major submarine and shipbuilding yards on the West Coast.

San Diego hosts the largest naval fleet in the world: it is home to 53 ships, over 120 tenant commands, and more than 35,000 sailors, marines, Department of Defense civilian employees and contractors.

The military infrastructure in San Diego is still growing and developing, with numerous military personnel stationed there, numbers of which are expected to rise. This plays a significant role in the city's economy, as of 2020, it provides roughly 25% of the GDP and provides 23% of the total jobs in San Diego.

San Diego's real estate is the 4th most expensive among large cities in the United States, with a median home price of $910,000.

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