Locals call this 32-square-mile peninsula you're crossing an island: San Diegans link it to Chula Vista by the Silver Strand and to San Diego by the Coronado Bridge, arcing over the bay since 1969. Coronado was developed in the 1880s by Elisha Babcock Jr. and Hampton Story, two Indiana businessmen who bought the entire peninsula for $110,000 in 1885 and proceeded to build what they intended to be the finest resort complex in the American West. The Hotel del Coronado was the crown of that vision.
The US Navy arrived in World War I and never left — Naval Air Station North Island occupies the northern half of the peninsula and is one of the most significant naval aviation facilities in the world, the birthplace of American carrier aviation. Because of the base, Coronado has a permanently transient population of Navy families alongside a permanent community of affluent retirees and second-home owners. The result is a town that is simultaneously very military and very genteel, with streets of pristine Victorian houses, world-class beaches, and the constant sound of jet engines overhead.