Speculators platted the streets around you during California's great land boom of 1886 to 1888, one of San Diego's earliest streetcar suburbs. Speculators platted hundreds of neighborhoods during the boom years of 1886 to 1888, laying out streets and selling lots to investors who believed San Diego was destined to become the great metropolis of the American Southwest. The boom collapsed in 1889 as dramatically as it had begun, leaving some subdivisions empty for decades.
Golden Hill, close enough to downtown to be genuinely useful, survived and filled in steadily through the 1890s and early 1900s. The neighborhood's Victorian and Craftsman houses date from that era, and many have been preserved — some because their owners cared about history, others simply because the neighborhood's working-class character meant there was no economic pressure to redevelop them. Golden Hill Park, at the neighborhood's center, is a small jewel of a public space with expansive views south toward Chula Vista and the Mexican border.
The neighborhood has historically been one of San Diego's most ethnically diverse, and that character persists today alongside rising property values.