How Balboa Park Got Its Name — And the Story San Diego Got Wrong
Discover the heated naming debate, the Cabrillo proposal, the choice of Balboa—and why the familiar story of a naming-contest winner may not be true.
Greg Ross
CEO / Owner - Nancy's Vacation Rentals
SAN DIEGO UNCOVERED
How Balboa Park Got Its Name — And the Story San Diego Got WrongFor more than 40 years, one of San Diego's greatest landmarks had an exceptionally boring name.
City Park.
Then, in 1910, San Diego decided its enormous 1,400-acre park needed a name worthy of the world's fair the city was preparing to host.
What followed was a surprisingly heated public debate involving explorers, city founders, newspaper campaigns and hundreds of suggestions.
And here's the best part:
The story most often told about who named Balboa Park may not actually be true.
For Decades, It Was Just “City Park”
San Diego reserved roughly 1,400 acres for a public park in 1868, when the city had only a few thousand residents.
The land was generally known as City Park.
It was accurate. It was practical.
It was not particularly inspiring.
By the early twentieth century, however, the park was changing. Kate Sessions and others had helped introduce trees and landscaping, civic leaders were investing in improvements, and San Diego was preparing for something much bigger.
San Diego Wanted to Host a World's Fair
In 1909, civic leaders proposed a major exposition celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal.
The future Panama-California Exposition would become San Diego's opportunity to advertise itself to the country and the world.
Suddenly, “City Park” didn't sound grand enough.
The park needed a name.
The First Big Suggestion: Cabrillo Park
Landscape architect Samuel Parsons Jr. had worked on plans for improving the park.
In July 1910, Parsons suggested naming it Cabrillo Park after Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the European explorer whose expedition entered San Diego Bay in 1542.
It was an obvious San Diego connection.
And city officials immediately started arguing about it.
Cabrillo? Horton? Silver Gate? Marston?
Park commissioners weren't convinced Cabrillo was the right choice.
Historical newspaper records preserved by the San Diego History Center show officials and residents proposing a remarkable collection of alternatives.
Among the names discussed were:
- Cabrillo Park
- Horton Park, honoring developer Alonzo Horton
- Marston Park, honoring civic leader George Marston
- Silver Gate
- Sierra
- Ocean View
- Bay View
Newspapers published suggestions and letters. Residents argued about which historical figures deserved recognition.
What sounds like harmless civic trivia became surprisingly contentious.
Then Someone Suggested “Balboa”
Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the Spanish explorer credited as the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas after crossing the Isthmus of Panama in 1513.
That connection was especially useful in 1910.
San Diego's upcoming exposition was being organized around the completion of the Panama Canal.
A historical figure associated with Panama and the Pacific Ocean fit the exposition's promotional story perfectly.
October 27, 1910: Balboa Wins
On October 27, 1910, members of the Park Commission met with representatives of the Panama-California Exposition and selected Balboa Park from the many names being discussed.
The Board of Park Commissioners formally adopted the name on November 1, 1910.
The California Legislature later ratified the decision in 1911.
City Park was now Balboa Park.
But San Diego Didn't Necessarily Love It
The decision didn't end the argument.
Contemporary newspaper material preserved by the San Diego History Center shows continued criticism of the name.
Some residents preferred Silver Gate. Others objected to honoring Balboa. Still others complained about how the commissioners had handled the entire process.
The name that now feels inseparable from San Diego was once controversial.
And Now Comes the Historical Mystery
If you've read the traditional version of this story, you may have heard something very specific:
A citywide naming contest was held, and a woman named Harriet Phillips won by suggesting “Balboa Park.”
Even the City of San Diego has repeated versions of that account.
There's a problem.
Historian Nancy Carol Carter examined the contemporary evidence for the Journal of San Diego History and found that no known account from 1910 describes a formal contest that Harriet Phillips won.
The “Contest Winner” Appeared Years Later
According to Carter's research, the familiar story connecting Harriet Phillips to a winning naming contest appears in later accounts rather than in the surviving contemporary reporting from 1910.
The commissioners absolutely did solicit suggestions from the public.
Phillips may well have suggested Balboa, and she was later credited with doing so.
But other people also proposed the name.
The historical record supports a messy public naming debate followed by a decision of the Park Commission—not the clean contest-and-winner story often repeated today.
History Usually Gets Cleaner With Age
This is one of the things that makes local history fascinating.
Real events are messy.
People disagree. Records conflict. Decisions happen in meetings. Newspapers get things wrong. Memories change.
Then decades pass and the complicated story becomes:
“They held a contest. Harriet Phillips won. The end.”
It's a much better story.
It just may not be what happened.
Why Balboa Was Such a Smart Marketing Name
Whatever the exact path to the name, “Balboa” fit San Diego's ambitions perfectly.
The Panama Canal would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The exposition would celebrate that achievement.
Balboa symbolized Panama and European awareness of the Pacific.
And San Diego wanted to position itself as the American city waiting on the Pacific side of that new global route.
The park's name was therefore more than historical tribute.
It was branding.
Five Years Later, Everyone Knew Balboa Park
When the Panama-California Exposition opened in 1915, the park had been transformed.
The Cabrillo Bridge, California Tower, Spanish Colonial Revival buildings and landscaped exposition grounds created much of the visual identity people associate with Balboa Park today.
“City Park” would have sounded almost absurdly modest.
Balboa Park sounded like a destination.
The Name Outlived the Argument
Today, few San Diegans think twice about the name.
Balboa Park feels inevitable.
But it wasn't.
San Diego could have ended up with Cabrillo Park, Horton Park, Silver Gate Park—or something else entirely.
Instead, a contentious naming debate in 1910 produced one of the most recognizable place names in Southern California.
And more than a century later, historians are still untangling exactly how it happened.
San Diego Uncovered
San Diego Uncovered explores the forgotten decisions, strange events, remarkable people and historical myths behind America's Finest City.
Because sometimes the most interesting part of history is discovering that the story everybody knows isn't quite right.
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Sources & Further Reading
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