Before the neighborhood
to 1946
-
The mesa is Mission Rancho land
Before 1834
All of what is now Serra Mesa was part of the Mission Rancho lands granted to the Church by the King of Spain. The community council's history dates the transfer out of Church hands to 1834, when Mexico secularized the missions, with the land going to men including Santiago Argüello and later being sold off to ranchers and homesteaders.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
Gibbs Field opens north of the mesa
The airfield opened with a single runway. The City bought it in 1947 and renamed it Montgomery Field in 1950.
City of San Diego Airports · checked
The subdivision years
1947 – 1969
-
Land donated for a hospital
Fundraising for a hospital to serve the growing postwar city began in 1946. Three years later the Philip Gildred family donated twelve and a half acres in what is now Serra Mesa as the site.
Times of San Diego · checked
-
Navy housing at Cabrillo Heights
Early 1950s
The community council dates the neighborhood as it stands today to the Navy's Cabrillo Heights housing, built in the early 1950s after the Korean War. The 1977 community plan counts 812 units of enlisted family housing at ten units per net acre; by 2025 the planning group described the military housing in Serra Mesa as 900 units.
-
Angier Elementary, the first school on the mesa
Angier Elementary was built in 1953, the earliest of the six public elementary schools inside Serra Mesa. The other five are Cubberley, Fletcher, Jones, Juarez and Wegeforth.
City of San Diego · checked
The mesa the year Angier was built: contour lines, Murray Canyon and almost nothing else. Linda Vista is the built-up area on the left. U.S. Geological Survey, La Jolla quadrangle, 1953. Public domain. -
Ground broken for Sharp Memorial
Ground was broken in 1953 for the Donald N. Sharp Memorial Community Hospital. The year before, donations from about 11,300 individuals, families and businesses had passed $2.5 million, following Thomas E. Sharp's $500,000 gift in 1950 in memory of his son, an Army Air Corps lieutenant killed in World War II.
Sharp HealthCare · checked
-
Children's Hospital opens
August 19, 1954
Children's Hospital of San Diego opened on August 19, 1954, and took its first twelve patients. Planning had begun in 1951 with the board of the San Diego Society for Crippled Children, and ground was broken in 1953. It was renamed Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego in 2006 after a gift from the Rady family.
Rady Children's Health · checked
-
The tracts go up
1955 – 1965
Serra Mesa's population went from 3,825 in 1955 to 27,269 in 1970, and most of the building happened in the ten years from 1955, on cheap land and helped along by the new freeways and imported water. Builders laid the tracts out without any shared plan, under names like Murray Ridge Estates, Princess Park and Royal Highlands, and named the streets after family, pets and birds; Birdland's are all birds. One builder, losing an argument with his wife about a street name, settled on Haveteur Way.
Convair's Plant 71 going up on Kearny Mesa in May 1957, looking east-southeast. The open ground beyond, to the right, is the mesa the tracts were about to cover. San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives, Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection (Catalog 14_010252). No known copyright restrictions. -
Sharp Memorial Hospital opens
April 2, 1955
Donald N. Sharp Memorial Community Hospital opened to patients on April 2, 1955, as a nonprofit, nonsectarian charitable institution. It remained the only general medical facility in Serra Mesa through the 1990s.
Times of San Diego Sharp HealthCare · checked
-
Jones and Wegeforth Elementary built
Jones Elementary and Wegeforth Elementary were both built in 1958.
City of San Diego · checked
-
What a house here cost
Late 1950s
Tri-W Builders sold the tracts here as Rancho Cabrillo, before the 1961 contest renamed the neighborhood. Its sketchbook offered three- and four-bedroom houses at $14,675 to $19,375 full price, from $295 down on a thirty-year loan, with Westinghouse appliances added to the mortgage.
Tri-W Builders sketchbook (Serra Mesa Community Council) · checked
The back page of the sketchbook: the streets as laid out, Aero Road along the top and Mission Valley along the bottom, with the price list beside it. Tri-W Builders sales brochure, from the Serra Mesa Community Council. -
Juarez Elementary built
Juarez Elementary was built in 1961, the last of the six public elementary schools built inside Serra Mesa.
City of San Diego · checked
-
A contest names Serra Mesa
June 1961
In June 1961 the Cabrillo Mission Community Council ran a contest to find one name for all the tracts from Birdland to Mission Village. Six names were sent in, and Mrs. John Dowling's entry, Serra Mesa, won her a $25 savings bond and a $10 gift certificate. The City Council ratified the choice.
Serra Mesa Community Council U.S. Geological Survey, La Jolla quadrangle, 1967 · checked
The same frame in 1967. The mesa is built out, and the name has made it onto the map — along with Gramercy, Greyling, Taft Junior High and Children's Hospital. U.S. Geological Survey, La Jolla quadrangle, 1967. Public domain. -
Taft Junior High opens
Taft opened at 9191 Gramercy Drive in 1962 under principal Eugene Brucker. It is the only secondary school inside Serra Mesa; Kearny High and Montgomery Junior High serve the area from outside it.
San Diego Unified School District City of San Diego · checked
-
The branch library opens on Sandrock Road
The Serra Mesa Branch Library opened in 1963 at 3440 Sandrock Road, just north of the Serra Mesa Shopping Center, with 4,860 square feet. Circulation peaked in the 1971 fiscal year at 219,600 volumes.
Where it stands now: 3440 Sandrock Rd (former library site) →
City of San Diego · checked
-
A fuel pipeline is laid under the neighborhood
A high-pressure underground pipeline carrying liquid fuels from Norwalk to the tank farm at Friars Road and Interstate 15 was built in 1963. It runs along Kearny Villa Road and Aero Drive, then south under Ruffin Road and Mission Village Drive.
Where it stands now: Mission Village Drive (Friars Rd to Gramercy Dr) →
City of San Diego · checked
-
The recreation center is built
Most of the Serra Mesa Recreation Center on Village Glen Drive dates from 1964.
City of San Diego Parks & Recreation · checked
Organizing
1970 – 1999
-
The community council forms
The Serra Mesa Community Council was formed in 1988. Its land use committee later became the basis for reforming the Serra Mesa Planning Group.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
The City buys the Ruffin Canyon parcels
The City acquired the city-owned parcels of Ruffin Canyon in 1988. The open space is made up of the main Ruffin stem plus the Sandrock, Taft and Shawn finger canyons, and a sewer main has run through it since 1957.
City of San Diego · checked
-
First issue of the Serra Mesa Observer
November 1, 1988
The community council has published the Observer, its bi-monthly newsletter, since November 1, 1988, and says it has never missed an issue.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women opens
Sharp Mary Birch opened in 1992 with 169 beds, next door to Sharp Memorial. More than 250,000 babies had been delivered at Sharp Memorial before it opened. Ground had been broken in 1990, funded in part by a $5 million gift from the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation in 1989.
Sharp HealthCare · checked
-
The planning group re-forms
April 1992
The planning group had gone inactive after the mid-1980s. It re-formed in April 1992 out of the community council's land use committee and was recognized by the City Council. It advises the City on development here.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
What's changing now
2000 – today
-
Ruffin Canyon dedicated as park land
The city-owned Ruffin Canyon parcels were dedicated as park land by Ordinance O-19137 in 2003. About 109 of the 140 acres of city-owned open space fall inside the City's Multiple Species Conservation Program preserve. Dedicated land cannot be converted to another use without a public vote.
City of San Diego · checked
-
A Kearny Mesa project pays $4.4 million for Serra Mesa parks
October 2005
The City Council approved the Mira Bella project on Kearny Villa Road in October 2005 with a condition that $4.4 million be paid for Serra Mesa parks in place of the park portion of the Kearny Mesa development impact fee. The money was tied to a joint-use facility at Wegeforth Elementary and a dog off-leash area at Cabrillo Heights Neighborhood Park. The project itself is in the Kearny Mesa plan area.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
The Sandrock Road library closes
October 16, 2006
The Serra Mesa Branch Library at 3440 Sandrock Road closed to the public on October 16, 2006, so staff could move the collection. The City described it as a 43-year-old facility. The building was then used for storage until 2019.
Where it stands now: 3440 Sandrock Rd (former library site) →
San Diego Public Library · checked
-
The new library opens on Aero Drive
December 2, 2006
The Serra Mesa–Kearny Mesa Branch Library opened at 9005 Aero Drive on December 2, 2006, built from recycled materials with native-plant landscaping. It cost $8.9 million, was designed by Coombs Architects and Planning in mission revival and craftsman styles at the community's request, and at 15,626 square feet is more than three times the size of the library it replaced. Fund-raising for a larger library had begun in the early 1990s, and the planning group and community council secured over $1 million toward it from the Stonecrest development. It is the one Aero Drive address the planning group's boundary counts as Serra Mesa, and it is where the planning group and the community council meet.
San Diego Public Library San Diego Public Library (branch page) Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
Rady Children's Acute Care Pavilion opens
September 2010
The Acute Care Pavilion opened in September 2010, taking the hospital to 442 beds the following year. The Ronald McDonald House on the campus had opened in July 2009. The planning group reviewed both, and construction traffic from the Sharp and Rady expansions was a long-running parking dispute in Birdland.
Serra Mesa Community Council Rady Children's Health · checked
-
The community garden opens
November 5, 2011
After an eight-week class to plan it, volunteers built the garden behind 2650 Melbourne Dr and opened it to gardeners.
Serra Mesa Community Council · checked
-
New trails connect Ruffin Canyon to Mission Valley
April 2026
Rebuilt trails through Ruffin Canyon, three new footbridges and a trailhead at Escala opened, linking the neighborhood to Mission Valley on foot.
KPBS · checked
Know something that belongs here? If you have a photograph, a newsletter or a deed that shows it, please send it.
Last checked · Add to the timeline, or correct it →