Balboa Park (San Diego) Informations

Balboa Park is a 1,200-acre (490 ha) urban cultural park in San Diego, California, United States. In addition to open space areas, natural vegetation zones, green belts, gardens, and walking paths, it contains museums, several theaters, and the world-famous San Diego Zoo. There are also many recreational facilities and several gift shops and restaurants within the boundaries of the park. Placed in reserve in 1835, the park's site is one of the oldest in the United States dedicated to public recreational use. Balboa Park is managed and maintained by the Parks and Recreation Department of the City of San Diego.

Balboa Park hosted the 1915–16 Panama–California Exposition and 1935–36 California Pacific International Exposition, both of which left architectural landmarks. The park and its historic Exposition buildings were declared a National Historic Landmark and National Historic Landmark District in 1977, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Balboa Park contains museums, gardens, attractions, and venues.

The park is essentially rectangular, bounded by Sixth Avenue to the west, Upas Street to the north, 28th Street to the east, and Russ Boulevard to the south. The rectangle has been modified by the addition of the Marston Hills natural area in the northwest corner of the park, while the southwest corner of the rectangle is occupied by a portion of the Cortez Hill neighborhood of Downtown San Diego and San Diego High School, both of which are separated from the park by Interstate 5. Also encroaching on the northern perimeter of the park is Roosevelt Middle School.

Two north-south canyons—Cabrillo Canyon and Florida Canyon—traverse the park and separate it into three mesas. The Sixth Avenue Mesa is a narrow strip bordering Sixth Avenue on the western edge of the park, which provides areas of passive recreation, grassy spaces, and tree groves. The Central Mesa is home to much of the park's cultural facilities, and includes scout camps, the San Diego Zoo, the Prado, and Inspiration Point. East Mesa is home to Morley Field and many of the active recreation facilities in the park.

The park is crossed by several freeways, which take up a total of 111 acres once designated for parkland. In 1948, California State Route 163 was built through Cabrillo Canyon and under the Cabrillo Bridge. This stretch of road, initially named the Cabrillo Freeway, has been called one of America's most beautiful parkways. A portion of Interstate 5 was built in the park in the 1950s.

Surrounding the park are many of San Diego's older neighborhoods, including Downtown, Bankers Hill, North Park, and Golden Hill.

Balboa Park is a primary attraction in San Diego and the region. Its many mature, and sometimes rare, trees and groves comprise an urban forest. Many of the original trees were planted by the renowned American landscape architect, botanist, plantswoman, and gardener Kate Sessions. An early proponent of drought tolerant and California native plants in garden design, Sessions established a nursery to propagate and grow for the park and the public.

The park's gardens include Alcazar Garden, Botanical Building, Desert Cactus Garden, Casa del Rey Moro Garden, Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden, Japanese Friendship Garden, Bird Park, George W. Marston House and Gardens, Palm Canyon, and Zoro Garden.

The main entrance to the park is via the Cabrillo Bridge and through the California Quadrangle. That entry is currently a two-lane road providing vehicle access to the park. A plan to divert vehicle traffic around to the south of the California Quadrangle, so as to restore it as a pedestrian-only promenade, was dropped after legal challenges, but was reapproved after the legal challenges failed and is scheduled for completion in 2019.

El Prado, a long, wide promenade and boulevard, runs through the park's center. Most of the buildings lining this street are in the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture style, a richly ornamented mixture of European Spanish architecture and the Spanish Colonial architecture of New Spain-Mexico. Along this boulevard are many of the park's museums and cultural attractions, including the San Diego Museum of Man, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the San Diego Art Institute, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum, the San Diego Natural History Museum, the San Diego History Center, the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and the Timken Museum of Art. Other features along El Prado include the Reflection Pond, the latticed Botanical Building, and the Bea Evenson Fountain. Next to the promenade are the San Diego Air and Space Museum and the San Diego Automotive Museum.

Theatrical and musical venues include the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, featuring one of the world's largest outdoor pipe organs; the Old Globe Theatre complex, which includes a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre as well as an outdoor stage and a theatre in the round; and the Starlight Bowl – an outdoor amphitheatre. The Casa Del Prado Theater is the home of San Diego Junior Theatre, the country's oldest children's theatre program. The House of Pacific Relations International Cottages collected on El Prado offer free entertainment shows.

The Botanical Building, designed by Carleton Winslow, was the largest wood lath structure in the world when it was built in 1915 for the Panama-California Exposition. It contains large specimen palms and other plants and sits next to a long reflecting pool on the El Prado side.

Located in the eastern third of the park is the Morley Field Sports Complex, which includes the Balboa Park Golf Complex, which contains a public 18-hole golf course and 9-hole executive course; the San Diego Velodrome; baseball and softball fields; cross country running course; the USTA-honored Balboa Tennis Club and tennis courts; archery ranges; the Bud Kearn public swimming pool; and a disc golf course.

Among the institutions and facilities within the park's borders but not administered by the city's Parks Department are the San Diego Zoo, the Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD), and San Diego High School. Other attractions in various areas of the park include chess and bridge outdoor tables, horseshoe pits, playgrounds, walking and jogging trails, sports fields and courts, and picnic areas. Clubs and facilities for pétanque and lawn bowling are based in the park. There is also Spanish Art Village which consists of art shops.

Spain and later Mexico made a practice of setting aside large tracts of land for the common use of citizens. In 1835, the Alta California authorities set aside a 1,400-acre (570 ha) tract of pueblo land in San Diego to be used for the public's recreational purposes. This land included the site of present-day Balboa Park, making it one of the oldest places in the United States dedicated to public recreational usage.

No further activity took place until 1845, when a survey was done by Henry D. Fitch to map the 47,000 acres. Three years later, the Mexican government was forced by the Mexican–American War to cede Alta California, including San Diego, to the United States.

On February 15, 1868, the city's Board of Trustees was asked to create a public park out of two 160-acre (65 ha) plots of land just northeast of the growing urban center of "New Town"—present-day Downtown San Diego. The request was made by one of the Trustees, E. W. Morse, who had picked the site in coordination with real estate developer Alonzo Horton. There is a sculptural group of Horton, Marston, and Morse by Ruth Hayward in the park.

Subsequently, a resolution to set aside for a large city park not just two plots of land, but nine plots totaling 1,400 acres (570 ha), was approved by the city's Board of Trustees on May 26, 1868. Then in 1870, a new law called the "Act to Insure the Permanency of the Park Reservation", was passed by the state legislature, which said, "These lands (lots by number) are to be held in trust forever by the municipal authorities of said city for the purpose of a park".

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