Area description continued:
More than sixty years before John Smith founded Jamestown and almost a century before the pilgrims landed at Plymonth, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese-born conquistador sailing under the flag of Spain, put into San Diego Bay on Sept. 28, 1542. Sixty years later, another Spanish explorer, Sebastian Vizcaino, arrived to give the port the name it bears today. In 1769, Fr. Junipero Serra established the Presidio of San Diego; this mission and the small settlement that developed around it became an agricultural and trading center. When Mexico declared her independence from Spain in 1822, most of the world had never heard of California yet alone San Diego. During the Mexican War the town and the port were commandeered by the U. S. Navy – the U. S. Navy never left. However as a consequence of the Mexican War, this small outpost and all of California became a part of the United States and a migration rush ensued. After the Civil War Alonzo Erastus Horton, a shrewd developer, decided that land south of the Missi