When the Marines took over Miramar Air Station from the Navy in 1997 it was both a handover and a hand-back — 90 years ago, the Marines ran much of the base under a different name.
But even that wasn't Miramar's first life. For that, the clock must turn back further, to a time before aircraft were the workhorses of the military. Actual horses were.
Camp Kearny
Marine Col. Erik Herrmann said the base looked much different when it opened in 1917.
"There were ... thousands of horses and mules, thousands of infantrymen training and, prepping to go overseas," Herrmann said.
The Army established Camp Kearny in 1917, one of several new bases hastily constructed as the country entered World War I.
At the time, the service needed wide-open spaces to train troops in 20th century warfare — tanks, artillery and trenches.
As far as San Diego was concerned at the time, the land was well out of town, said local historian Jim Newland.
"This is that point where the community ... they're giving the military what they need, knowing this is going to bring resources and jobs," Newland said.
Meanwhile, North Island was established as an air station. A few years later the Marines opened a base at what is today the Recruit Depot.
At its height Camp Kearny housed about 30,000 troops, a number that almost doubled the area's population at the time.
It had more than 11 hundred buildings, including 140 mess halls.
There was a train depot near what is today the intersection of Miramar Road and Frost-Mar Place. That station — the Linda Vista Depot — served the base that is today known as Miramar. Newland said at the turn of the last century most locals called everything north of Mission Valley "Linda Vista."
Today, everything except the railroad spur to Camp Kearny is long gone.
Newland said the Army intended for the base to be temporary.
"Probably half the folks who got trained at Camp Kearny never saw any action or even got overseas," he said.
The base closed after the war but the land remained available, and soon the Navy began using Camp Kearny's old parade grounds as an airport for dirigibles.
"I think Camp Kearny is the first sort of piece to confirm to the federal government that San Diego was a place of not only strategic value, but (also) a really important partner in them meeting their mission in defense," Newland said.
Camp Elliott
In the 1930s the Marines began to outgrow their base in San Diego and looked northward. Camp Holcomb was established in 1934 at the southeast corner of the old Camp Kearny base. It was later renamed Camp Elliott.
At the time Camp Elliott was the primary Marine base on the West Coast.
"There were about five different command headquarters on this side at Camp Elliott," Herrmann said. "Before Camp Pendleton opened up, really this was the only training ground to prep young men for the what they would see in World War II."
More than 50,000 Marines trained at the camp during the war — including the first Navajo Code Talkers.
Camp Elliott was huge — its southernmost point stretched to the southern terminus of Santo Road. The base boundary then followed the San Diego River northeast to Santee before turning north toward what is today Scripps Poway Parkway.
Beeler Canyon marked the base's northern border.
Marine units began moving north to Camp Pendleton when the Marines opened that base in 1942.
After the war the Marines didn't need Camp Elliott any longer. It was deactivated in 1946.
The main infrastructure of the base — barracks, chow halls, swimming pools, a movie theater and an amphitheater — were at what today is a freeway interchange.
Surrounding the junction of I-15 and State Route 163, weeds sprout from the concrete foundations and crumbling asphalt roads that were once Camp Elliott.
World War II-era Quanset huts are still there and it's where the San Diego Sheriff's Department runs a training compound.
Naval Air Station Miramar
From the 1920s through World War II the Navy maintained operations at what had been Camp Kearny.
In 1936, the first paved airstrip was built at the airfield. During World War II it was renamed Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny.
After the war, the city of San Diego agreed to share the airfield in a lease agreement with the Navy. There was talk of converting it into a full-time civilian airport for the city, Newland said.
"It was still undeveloped area," he said. "And so that's sort of interesting, you know, in people trying to understand just how ... far out of town it was. It was out there."
Other than the beach communities of Pacific Beach and La Jolla, the city hadn't yet sprawled north of Mission Valley. Miramar was the sticks, Newland said.
"In the late '40s it was still too far out of town," he said. "And they decided, 'no it's too far for us.'"
With the steady hum of interstate traffic behind him, Herrmann looked toward the airfield from the Camp Elliott ruins.
"They could have had this," Herrmann said of the city. "I'm glad that they didn't take us up on that."
In 1951, after the start of the Korean War, Miramar was converted to a full air station. The next year the city canceled its lease deal with the base airfield.
Naval Air Station Miramar became the home of the Navy's newest fighter jets in the 1950s. In 1969, the Navy established a dogfighting school at the base — Top Gun.
Sycamore Canyon
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and '60s the U.S. was in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.
The Air Force took control of a piece of Camp Elliott at the far eastern fringes. NASA and General Dynamics built a large underground rocket test facility on the rim of Sycamore Canyon.
General Dynamics subsidiary Convair build a sprawling rocket manufacturing plant in Kearny Mesa. They build the Atlas missile — the first intercontinental ballistic missile.
The rocket engines produced at the plant were tested at the Sycamore Canyon facility, Newland said. The program was a national security secret.
"A lot of it was very secretive ... because of the worries of the Soviet Union getting our technology," he said. "They needed a place and here was a remote part of this base that they could go."
The complex didn't operate long. Things moved fast during the space race of the 1960s, Newland said.
"Weapons and those technologies become obsolete so fast," he said.
The Sycamore Canyon site was declared surplus property in 1969 and abandoned. In 1972, the property was turned over to the Navy.
Today the ruins of the complex are deteriorating in a secured section of the base. Bullet holes and decades of graffiti are the only proof people may still visit.
Some urban explorers have published videos of the ruins on YouTube, but the Marines keep a close watch on the area. Security cameras are monitored by base police and they are quick to respond to trespassers, one base police officer told KPBS.
The Kearny Mesa Convair plant that once employed 8,000 people closed in the 1990s and was demolished by 1996.
Newland said San Diego continues to benefit from these projects today. With so many high tech aerospace jobs the area was in need of engineers.
"(It) drew a lot of attention here and eventually helped us get a University of California campus," Newland said, referring to UC San Diego.
The university itself was built on a former Marine base — Camp Matthews.
"These ongoing relationships, I think, are part of this ... legacy that starts with getting a lease in World War I," Newland said.
Base realignment and closure
The winding-down of the Cold War in the late 1980s ushered in an era of military downsizing. The Base Realignment and Closure Act, or BRAC, shuttered hundreds of military bases through the mid-2000s.
Pentagon penny-pinchers set their sights on Southern California — and San Diego.
"Just about everything was on a consideration list is my understanding," Newland said. "That's why there was such a key fight."
The San Diego Naval Training Center was a major installation lost in the process, he said. The former Navy boot camp is now Liberty Station.
The realignment also meant a reshuffling of the Navy and Marine Corps air forces.
The Marines took command of MCAS Miramar in 1997 and the base became the new home of Marine aviation on the West Coast.
Marine Corps Air Stations El Toro and Tustin both closed in 1999.
The Navy moved its carrier air wings to NAS Lemoore and its Top Gun school to NAS Fallon, Nevada.
The military did turn over some land from Camp Elliott. It sold what became Tierrasanta to developers and Mission Trails Regional Park to the city in the '60s.
In December 1983, two eight-year-old boys in Tierrasanta were killed after finding an old unexploded shell in a canyon.
The deaths prompted years of cleanup by the military. The Army Corps of Engineers issues reports on the cleanup every five years, that last report was published in 2021.
Other surplus land is now part of Scripps Ranch.
In 2006, a San Diego ballot measure to explore using part of Miramar for a new airport failed.
The undeveloped 15,000 acres of East Miramar are special, Herrmann said.
"Going 15 south down to San Diego you don't see houses — you don't see shopping centers," he said of the eastern expanse of the base. "It's kind of really special for us — it's kind of best left ... unimproved."
