More than 45,000 students attend UC San Diego — a perennial top-ranked school according to various publications and organizations that produce such rankings.
It's also a key economic engine for the region. The university employs more than 40,000 people and contributes more than $13 billion each year to the region's economy, according to the University of California.
But 70 years ago, the Marines' base in La Jolla — Camp Matthews — was still training Marine recruits on its 15 firing ranges. The high-tech research university wasn't a sure thing and faced significant opposition.
By the late 1950s, developers saw dollar signs in all the vacant land then controlled by the city, said Rebecca Jo Plant, a history professor at UCSD.
"We're talking about a period when land values were already really beginning to rise, and developers were already on the scene," she said. "The initial attempts to get the land in place — to get the Board of Regents to sign on ... there was a lot of wheeling and dealing."
Among the barriers — Edwin Pauley, who sat on the UC Board of Regents. The UC Berkeley graduate was politically connected and in the 1950s opposed a new UC campus in San Diego, according to a UC San Diego Emeriti Association report.
Despite his opposition in 1957, the board approved three new Southern California UC campuses. But Pauley added a provision requiring at least 1,000 acres at no cost to the university.
It wasn't guaranteed San Diego could deliver. It would need help.
Camp Matthews
Camp Matthews opened as a rifle range in 1920, according to the U.S Marine Corps.
Marine recruits from the San Diego recruit depot would march north to the base for their rifle and pistol training.
The base expanded during World War II as thousands of Marines came to San Diego for training before shipping out to the war's Pacific Theater.
The base was huge — its 15 ranges included those for grenades and rockets. Its almost 600 acres ran from today's Regents Road on its eastern edge to Gilman Drive on the west.
What is now called Voigt Drive marked the base's northern edge, and its fence line went as far south as the San Diego California Temple.
Camp Callan
During World War II, 15,000 troops lived at Camp Callan, an Army coastal defense base in La Jolla.
The camp sat on 710 coastal acres leased from the city. The Army ended its lease at the end of the war.
Almost 300 buildings were disassembled, sold and used to build about 1,500 homes, according to the UC San Diego Emeriti Association.
Torrey Pines Golf Course was built on some of the land. The city committed the rest to UCSD.
UC San Diego
UC San Diego can trace its start back to 1912 with the opening of the Scripps Institution for Biological Research — now the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
In the 1950s, Scripps director Roger Revelle was among several locals working for a UC campus in La Jolla.
San Diego voters approved some city land for the campus in 1956, and the city had about 450 acres left over from Camp Callan. But they'd need 1,000 acres for the campus.
Suburban sprawl was already pushing the Marines further away from San Diego. Before the end of World War II, most activity at Camp Elliott moved to Camp Pendleton.
By 1961, Camp Matthews was also being squeezed by sprawl and was going to have to shut down some of its ranges.
City leaders lobbied Congress, and that year, it approved a plan to fund the Marines' move from Camp Matthews to Camp Pendleton. The nearly 550 acres turned over by Congress put the La Jolla site well above the 1,000-acre minimum.
Gone but not forgotten
Jay Campbell is a senior at UCSD studying computer science. The Navy veteran works at the Student Veterans Resource Center on campus and said he didn't know the campus was built on former military bases.
"Not until I got here, and honestly, not until I came to the Student Veterans Resource Center," Campbell said.
The center has old photos of Camp Matthews on display. Campbell said in his experience, that's how people learn about the campus's history.
"Every time," he said. "Usually, it's passing pictures in the hallway there."
The university's past as a military installation wasn't always so hidden. In its early days, a lot of leftover Marine buildings were used by the school. World War II-era Quonset huts hosted classes into the 1980s, Plant said.
"I think there's still quite a bit of nostalgia about some of that," she said.
New construction at UCSD has all but obliterated evidence that Camp Matthews was there. The base's main gate was at an intersection that no longer exists — it's now the new Triton Center.
Some of the last remaining original Camp Matthews buildings were torn down as part of the project. Building 409, next to Matthews Quad, is still there. Relocated Camp Matthews buildings are now home to the Che Cafe.
And on the far east edge of campus, a lone cement sentry booth still stands at what was Camp Matthews' back gate. Graffiti from bored Marines dating back to World War II is preserved on its walls.
Plant said the changes are part of the California story.
"It's interesting how people remember space," she said. "I think the nostalgia is really not just about the buildings, but about a university that was a size and even operated at a pace that is different now."
Looking toward the future
Shannon Barber runs the Student Veterans Resource Center on campus. She said it's important to remember this land's history stretches further than just a century — for millennia, it was home to native Kumeyaay people.
She said the veterans center isn't going anywhere, and as long as they're there, neither will the memory of Camp Matthews.
"We want people to know their history, and as long as we are here, they hopefully will be aware of the fact that this was once Camp Matthews," Barber said.
She said the best way to remember and honor people who served there is to continue to serve veterans.
"We are genuinely a space that cares about them," she said. "And I think one of the coolest things that we get to do is help them in this transition period."
Plant said the university's planners at the city and the UC Board of Regents had an ambitious vision for what the university could be in 1964 — ambitions far exceeded today.
"I think UCSD — the UC more broadly — and the state has gotten a very good return on its investment," she said.
As of now, there are no plans to tear down Building 409 as part of the University's construction plans, a university spokesperson told KPBS.
And the original plaque dedicated at the turnover of the base to the university still sits on a boulder underneath the flagpole at the UCSD Town Square.
