1,200 acres of canyons, gardens, and museums open around you, land set aside for the public in 1868, now one of the great urban parks in America. The land was set aside for public use in 1868, when San Diego was still a tiny frontier town, in a visionary act of civic planning. For its first several decades the park was scrubland.
Then came the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, organized to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and to put San Diego on the world map. The city hired architect Bertram Goodhue to design a collection of Spanish Colonial Revival buildings that transformed the empty mesa into a fantasyland of domes, arcades, towers, and tiled courtyards. Many of those buildings remain today, including the California Building, whose 200-foot tower is the most recognizable silhouette in San Diego.
The Exposition left behind not just buildings but institutions: what began as temporary exhibition halls became permanent museums, and the park today houses fifteen museums, six performance venues, the Botanical Building, and the Zoo. A second exposition, the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition, added more buildings. Balboa Park is the product of two moments of civic ambition, still living.