San Diego Local Wiki

The unmistakable Victorian silhouette of the Hotel del Coronado, with its scarlet-shingled conical turrets rising above the Pacific surf since 1888. In late 1885, retired Midwestern railway executive Elisha Babcock Jr. and piano manufacturer Hampton L. Story rowed across San Diego Bay to hunt wild jackrabbits on an uninhabited peninsula of coastal scrub and shifting dunes. As the story goes, Babcock paused mid-hunt, took in the sweeping arc of the Pacific surf, and turned to Story with an audacious wager: they would build a seaside resort so grand that it would become "the talk of the Western world." Three years and over a million dollars later, the Hotel del Coronado threw open its doors in February 1888 as the largest wooden structure in the United States and the undisputed crown jewel of American resort architecture. More than a century later, "The Del" remains an extraordinary living monument. Standing on the golden sand of Coronado Beach beneath its s...