San Diego County has thousands of acres of parks, open space preserves and state-protected land. It’s obvious that for anyone who likes the outdoors, this is an ideal place to be.
What’s less obvious is how the most iconic mountaintops and local parks got their names. While many are named after San Diegans of yesteryear, others have a more complicated history.
Here are the condensed stories of the people and inspiration behind 10 parks and peaks in San Diego County.
Mount Helix
In 1872, Swiss biologist Louis Agassiz was exploring eastern San Diego County when he came across a small animal that would eventually lend its name to Mount Helix. Agassiz was a well-known scientist at the time, but today is largely ed for his racist ideas and for White supremacy.
He was near the mountain when he saw the helix aspersa, a European garden snail, that had not, until that point, been identified in San Diego. Agassiz shared the discovery with Rufus King Porter, the influential landowner and writer in the area who gave Spring Valley its name, who decided to name it Mount Helix after the snail.
Jim Newland, a San Diego-based historian and planner for the California State Parks, said it’s possible that the nonnative snail arrived in San Diego on ships carrying cattle or livestock feed. Today, the helix aspersa is found throughout the region.
Mount Helix is itself a “natural and cultural icon,” Newland said. Despite being technically located within the unincorporated region of Casa de Oro-Mount Helix, it’s an important landmark for the communities of La Mesa, El Cajon and Spring Valley. Newland points out that Helix High School was originally going to be called La Mesa High, but residents and civic groups opposed the name because it wasn’t inclusive of all enrollment areas. Helix, referring to the peak shared by everyone, was used instead.
Kate Sessions Park
Horticulturist and landscape architect Kate Sessions earned the nickname of the “Mother of Balboa Park” planting hundreds of trees there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her legacy goes beyond the park, though; she also introduced other iconic San Diego flora to the city, like the jacaranda, bougainvillea and bird of paradise, opened a nursery and even dipped into the real estate market.
Today, Kate Sessions Park in Pacific Beach takes her name, along with the Sessions Elementary School. Sessions spent many years of her life in San Diego as a resident of Pacific Beach and dedicated much of her time and energy to growing and beautifying the neighborhood, which she did through real estate and gardening efforts, often in collaboration with her brother, Frank.
She also led an effort in the 1930s to establish a neighborhood park on city land, known as Color Park, where she planted bright, colorful flowers.
Sessions died in 1940, and the city continued to oversee Color Park, which, in 1948, it combined with other plots of land in the area to establish the larger Soledad Terrace Park. In 1957, the city council voted to rename the park Kate O. Sessions Memorial Park, which officially changed in November 1957 on the 100th anniversary of her birthday.
Cowles Mountain
Sitting at 1,593 feet, Cowles Mountain is the highest peak in the city of San Diego. The peak’s name is credited to George A. Cowles, a prominent rancher in East County from 1877 until his death in 1887. The town surrounding his ranch became known as Cowlestown; however, after his death, his widow went on to marry the engineer Milton Santee, and Cowlestown became known as Santee, as it remains today.
The city and county purchased the mountain in 1974 and dedicated the name of the peak in 1984. For many years prior, though, it was known locally as “S” Mountain, after hundreds of San Diego State University students painted the letter on the mountainside in 1931. The “S” stood for “State” and was a point of student pride, especially during Homecoming week.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, described by one historian as a “vast, open, essentially monochromatic world of subtle beauty,” is California’s first desert park and the largest park in the state’s system.
In 1928, in a feasibility report on a desert park, the project was given the name Borrego Palms Desert State Park, taken after the nearby Borrego Valley and the date palms that grew there. The word “borrego” is Spanish for “sheep,” and bighorn sheep live in this area.
A few factors led to the park’s eventual name change. In 1930, the historian Herbert E. Bolton published the translated diaries of the Spanish colonizer Juan Bautista de Anza’s expedition in California, which brought more attention to the desert and its history. Anza traveled west across a portion of the desert, in what is now part of eastern San Diego County, from the Imperial Valley in 1775.
Over the years, and coupled with land transfers and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, the park’s boundary shifted and expanded as well, as historian Diana Lindsay described in her book, “Anza-Borrego A to Z: People, Places, and Things.” When, in 1933, park officials received approval for a park extension south of Highway 78, Guy Fleming, the Southern California State Park District Superintendent, proposed that it be named Anza Desert State Park. The name, thought to be historically significant and more fitting for the whole park, was approved for the entire area in 1938.
In the early 1950s, officials opened a second park in the area: Borrego State Park, which quickly grew in popularity. As visitation at the two parks increased, the parks’ superintendent was ordered to “either solve the problem or get rid of the parks,” Lindsay wrote.
The two parks were ultimately consolidated into one park, merging their resources, services and personnel, and given the new name of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in 1957.
Palomar Mountain
The 18th century Spanish colonizers who climbed this 6,000-foot mountain in north San Diego County were leaving nothing to mystery when they called it “Palomar”; the word “palomar” is Spanish for “dovecote,” or a place where pigeons or doves live, and thousands of band-tailed pigeons were nesting in the area. The Indigenous Luiseño tribe called the mountain Paauw.
But for the latter part of the 19th century, the peak went under a new designation: Smith Mountain, named after Joseph Smith, a reportedly well-liked homesteader and public official who was, according to news reports and local s from the time, killed in the area. As outlined in Catherine M. Wood’s 1937 book about the history of Palomar Mountain, community re-named the mountaintop after Smith, though later, in 1901, residents circulated a petition to the United States Board on Geographic Names to restore the name to Palomar. While it isn’t exactly known why they wanted to revert the name, it’s possible that enough time had ed and Joseph Smith didn’t mean as much to the current residents.
Morley Field
Few people were as important to Balboa Park’s origins and success as John Morley, the park’s superintendent from 1911 to 1938. Taking the job on the cusp of the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, Morley led the park’s development in its early years, along with managing several other parks across San Diego.
Under Morley’s leadership in 1916 alone, “2,597 trees, 12,152 shrubs, 235,253 bedding and flower plants and bulbs and 22,625 flowering decorative plants and bulbs” were added to the conservatory and botanical buildings in Balboa Park at that time, according to his annual report from that year.
In 1934, the recreational area in Balboa Park — running along Upas Street from Alabama to Arnold streets — was renamed Morley Field. Today, Morley Field is home to a sports complex, disc golf course and access to trails connecting to Florida Canyon.
Woodson Mountain
Woodson Mountain was named after Marshall Clay Woodson, who reportedly served in a medical capacity for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Originally from Kentucky, Woodson moved to the Ramona area in the late 1870s and lived on 320 acres of land near the base of the 2,800-foot tall peak.
Long before Woodson arrived in San Diego, the Kumeyaay people referred to the summit as Ewiiy Hellyaa, translated in English to the “mountain of the moonlit rocks” or “moon mountain.” The mountain is known as a place of power for the Kumeyaay, related to a mythical rabbit and the moon.
The rocks at the top of the mountain, Steele Valley granodiorite and Cajalco quartz monzonite, do appear to glow in the dark and give off a moon-like quality. Today, the peak is best known for “Potato Chip Rock,” a thin piece of granodiorite that resembles the snack food and has become a favorite for hikers seeking a photo op.
Cuyamaca Rancho State Park
The area encoming Cuyamaca Rancho State Park has throughout history been home to Indigenous tribes, Mexican rancheros, Spanish missionaries and American settlers. The word Cuyamaca is a Spanish appropriation of the Kumeyaay term Ah-ha Kwe-ah-mac, meaning “the place where it rains” or “the mist behind the clouds.”
Though the translation to Spanish and English isn’t exact, the Cuyamaca mountains are one of the few places in San Diego County that still hold an Indigenous-related name.
The second part of the park’s name can be attributed to the history of California ranchos. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before California became a U.S. state, the Mexican and Spanish governments offered land grants called ranchos, or large sections of land used to primarily raise cattle, to people willing to settle in California. In 1845, a Mexican named Agustín Olvera was granted the land that today holds the state park and called it Rancho Sierra de Cuyamaca. Decades of land disputes, mining and gold discoveries would ensue before the state opened the park in 1933 under the name Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.
Why they switched the order of the words — Rancho Cuyamaca to Cuyamaca Rancho — is a small mystery. However, the historian Newland points to a proposed development project in the early 1900s that went under the name El Rancho Cuyamaca. When the state bought the land in the 1930s, officials may have attempted to differentiate the park from the project through this simple switch of words.
Stonewall Peak
While no battles of the Civil War were fought in San Diego, many of the county’s landmarks were named after of the Confederate army. Stonewall Peak, in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, shares its name with the nearby Stonewall Mine, named in 1870 after Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
A Confederate-sympathizer, William Skidmore, is most often cited — including on the state park’s sign posted at the location — as the person who found the mine and named it the Stonewall Jackson Mine. Skidmore is reported to have traveled to San Diego County with his family from Texas in a mule wagon train and let his mules graze in the mountains where he found the mine.
There are discrepancies among historic s about who owned the mine and the surrounding land going forward, but most say the last name Jackson was dropped in the next few years. The San Diego History Center writes that Skidmore is believed to have stopped using it in response to anti-Southern sentiment from many incoming miners. The California Department of Parks and Recreation attributes the change to its owner beginning in 1886, future California governor Robert Waterman.
Nonetheless, it has been known simply as Stonewall Mine ever since, and the Stonewall name was used, likely by the mine’s early owners, to name surrounding peaks, canyons and other geographic features.
The Union-Tribune reported in 2020 that state park officials said a project is under way to update information s at the mine site that “will include a more expanded historical context based on more recent scholarship and public engagement.” As of this writing, the s have not been updated, but the Union-Tribune confirmed that officials are reviewing a possible name change to a Kumeyaay name for the peak and surrounding natural features.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it received a complaint that the name Stonewall is “offensive” and has forwarded it to state officials. The Union-Tribune is working to obtain more information and will report any updates.
Chicano Park
Located in Barrio Logan, Chicano Park is an important cultural landmark and gathering place for the surrounding community.
Why Chicano Park is one of San Diego’s must-see cultural landmarks
In 1970, residents and Chicano activists protested the development of a highway patrol station at this location, advocating that the space should be a community park instead. They occupied the area for 12 days until an agreement was reached between the community, state officials and the city of San Diego to the creation of the park. In some early references, the park was called Chicano Peoples’ Park, but was later shortened to Chicano Park to differentiate from the Peoples’ Park in Berkeley, California, established in 1969.
With more than 100 murals depicting images from Mexican, Mexican American and Indigenous history painted underneath the freeway on its pillars, today Chicano Park represents the site of struggle and strength in the community.
