By Land and By Sea

On any given day in San Diego, you’re likely to hear the buzz of fighter jets flying overhead at least once. Not the easy-going, laid-back fantasy of those Visit California commercials; no, this is San Diego in full color. Sea Hawk for the Navy––Sea Stallion for Marines—helicopter blades strike through the air in full THS. As the Miramar-inspired film Top Gun celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, San Diego finds itself still in the forefront of military culture in the good ol’ U.S.A. With its long history of military influence, San Diego veritably wouldn’t exist without its armed forces. As the founding Fleet Week city, San Diego is a quietly humble military town.

Not often known to the throngs of newcomers who stream into San Diego to enjoy the weather, tides, and friendly vibe, San Diego was once home to Fightertown. Immortalized in the 1986 film, San Diego was a culture rich in military presence, and the world found itself enraptured by the high-flying, death-defying romantics of Top Gun. Based at the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School—commonly known as TOPGUN—which was based

at the former Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, it can decidedly be said that it was the U.S. military that threw San Diego a lifeline in the days when it was Boomtown or Bust.

For the past 219 years, the natural deep-water harbor of San Diego has drawn defense vessels to its shores. The perhaps politically incorrect—yet no doubt formative—founding fathers of San Diego, Alonzo Horton and William Davis, foresaw the military as the city’s greatest ally roughly 150 years ago. With no gold and no clean drinking water, just deep ocean waters and beautiful landscapes to offer settlers, Davis and Horton sought out the Army to set up military forts during the Mexican-American War and Civil War respectively; the rest is proverbial history.

Much of San Diego County is named after commanding officers of the U.S. Armed Forces, such as Kearny and Rosecrans. Balboa Park served as a naval base near its origin to appease President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who supported San Diego as the prime Naval city at the start of World War II. Even Ballast Point, now synonymous with pop culture micro-brews, hails from San Diego’s original military outpost in Point Loma.

Point Loma’s Liberty Station is an artist’s paradise: wine and watercolor classes, several ballet schools, and one of the nation’s largest megachurches, The Rock, all shelter together in quaint brick buildings overlooking the bay. One hardly notices the signage that fronts the narrow buildings reading "Barracks." Liberty Station is quintessential free-spirited San Diego, but it was once the Naval Training Center San Diego, the Navy’s premiere recruit training command, or boot camp, for the better part of the 20th century. Like the Missions that dot the San Diego landscape, military outposts quietly pepper the backdrop of San Diego’s history.

Today, all branches of the U.S. military call San Diego home, making it the largest military city in the nation. While it was the Army that William Davis recruited to set up stations along the shores of Old Town, it is the Navy and the Marine Corps that have grown San Diego into the powerhouse city it has become. Between Camp Pendleton and Marine Corp Air Station Miramar, more than 51,000 Marines and recruits are based in San Diego—that equates to 1/4th of the worldwide force. San Diego County is also home to about 50,000 Navy personnel or about one in seven of the entire Navy. Currently, the Navy has 49 ships harbored in San Diego, a fleet that injected $2.6 billion in direct spending into the city’s economy.

Twenty-two percent of San Diego’s workforce is employed by the military, including both military personnel and civilian employees. With San Diego’s Navy presence nearly doubling in the next 8 years—with the number of military vessels in our harbor rising to 84—our San Diego military employees are certain to grow.

Aside from the Defense Department revenue, the Armed Forces draw in considerable tourism dollars. The USS Midway is one of only a handful of historic warship museums in the U.S., and it’s arguably the best. San Diego’s annual Fleet Week also draws crowds for the month-long celebration to honor current and former service members and their families. Coronado Island is a popular tourist destination, but the village is also flanked by two Navy bases, one amphibious and one airfield, for those who want to catch a glimpse of ships sailing off to sea or a fighter jet in flight. Coronado is one of two Navy bases in the country that trains the elite Navy SEALs.

With Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Naval Base Point Loma and even Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton up north, there’s no shortage of military personnel in town. Make no mistake, San Diego is a quietly humble military city. 

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