“City Park” Becomes “Balboa Park” 1910

By Nancy Carol Carter

A cartoon in the Dec. 5, 1910, issue of the San Diego Sun newspaper, pokes fun at names the park commissioners might attach to places around town. Courtesy of San Diego Public Library Special Collections.

Note: This is adapted from a longer article debunking a long-held but incorrect story about the renaming of City Park in 1910 to Balboa Park. The full story of how Balboa Park got its name is told in Nancy Carol Carter’s “Naming Balboa Park: Correcting the Record,” Journal of San Diego History, vol. 56, no. 1 (2010), 31-42. Online  at sandiegohistory.org/journal/v56-1/v56-1carter.pdf

tinyurl.com/renaming-balboa-park

Created in 1868, Balboa Park was known simply as City Park for the first 42 years of its existence. The idea of adopting a more distinctive name for the park was not new, but in 1910 an impetus to make the name change arrived with the decision to use park land for the planned 1915 Panama-California Exposition. City Park needed a more alluring and prepossessing name.

The most frequently told story about the naming of Balboa Park is false. In this mythic narrative, a citywide contest was held in 1910 to find a new name for San Diego’s City Park. Harriet Phillips won the contest by suggesting “Balboa Park.” This story appeared in an unsigned San Diego Union newspaper article in 1918 and, despite its inaccuracy, was afterwards repeated for decades in books, articles and even official Balboa Park websites.

Balboa Park did not get its name from a contest and Phillips was uninvolved. Rather, the decision to rename the park and the responsibility for selecting a name fell to the appointed three-member San Diego Park Commission.

When pressed to adopt a new name, the commissioners asked for suggestions and were soon at the center of a public furor. Local newspapers staked out opposing positions and whipped up community sentiment.

In back-and-forth letters to the editor, citizens jeered at the names suggested by highbrow “literati” on one hand, and tasteless bumpkins on the other. The commissioners approached their decision with care and detachment, working together without the acrimony of the public discourse, but found no clear guidance in the stormy sea of public opinion. The besieged park commissioners delayed their decision for months.

The San Diego Sun leapt into the void with its own park naming contest. Half the letters pouring into the newspaper suggested the name Silver Gate. This term was unofficially attached to the San Diego Bay entrance in the 19th century. Proponents liked the idea of establishing a southern twin of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. But it was Mrs. C.A. Mallette who won the contest, pointing out that the popular favorite, Silver Gate, sounded secondary to Golden Gate. She collected the $5 prize by proposing the name “San Diego Park.”

A shield representing Balboa appears on the western end of the El Prado arcade, reconstructed in 2005 and fronting the Timken Museum of Art. Photo: C100.

Four months after agreeing to do so, the park commissioners adopted a new name for City Park on October 27, 1910, while in joint session with a Panama-California Exposition delegation who pressed the importance of renaming the park without further delay. Horton, Silver Gate and Cabrillo were considered, but it was decided that Balboa, the Spanish explorer who in Panama scaled a Darien peak and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, best represented gravitas and historical significance. One of the park commissioners later wrote that the names Darien, Pacific and Del Mar were among those discussed at this decisive October meeting. The new name, Balboa Park, became official on November 1, 1910.

The public reception of this choice was deeply divided. The San Diego Sun ran a headline in capital letters: “WE DO NOT WANT BALBOA! WHY SHOULDN’T THE PEOPLE OF SAN DIEGO NAME THEIR OWN PARK?”  Pledges to never use the “ugly, unmusical and foreign” new name were made and the choice was ridiculed with disparaging biographical accounts of Vasco Núñez de Balboa. The City Council ignored a demand to hold a special election in which San Diegans could vote on the name of their park instead of accepting the will of the park commissioners.

In time, the critics toned down because they were ignored. San Diego city leaders had their eyes fixed firmly on the future. The controversy over renaming City Park was but a minnow amid the large fish they had to fry. They were bringing the Panama-California Exposition to life. It would open in 1915 and it would open in a place called Balboa Park.

The city changed “City Park” to “Balboa Park” in 1910 ahead of the exposition’s opening in 1915. A Spanish conquistador, Vasco Núñez de Balboa (ca. 1475-1519) was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the Isthmus of Panama in 1513. Beheaded in 1519 in a political dispute, he was honored with several other place names in the U.S., Colombia and Spain. Panama’s official currency is the balboa (valued at one U.S. dollar). Historical accounts differ on his treatment of indigenous people he encountered in the New World. Photo: Wikipedia Commons.

A tapestry portraying Balboa  hangs in the Balboa Theater, opened in 1924 in downtown San Diego. It was saved by preservationist Steve Karo in the 1980s and returned to the Balboa for restoration and framing. Photo: San Diego Theatres.

Some Other Names suggested for City Park in 1910

Bay View

Buena Vista

Cabrillo

Climatic

Central

Del Mar

El Dorado

Exposition

Grand

Grandview

Hermosa

Horton’s Sunset

Imperial

Junipero Serra

La Vista

Linda Vista

Miramar

Ocean View

Pacific

Paradise

Roosevelt

San Diego

Sierra

Silver Gate

Sunt