A wet finger of the Pacific curls into the California coast just above the U.S. border with Mexico. San Diego - skyscraper-prosperous and fringed with docks - crowds most of the resulting bay's eastern shore, while the west is defined by a long peninsula. The peninsula begins to the south as an incredibly slim strip of sand called the Silver Strand, then broadens substantially at its northern tip.
There you'll come upon San Diego's little sister, the distinctive community of Coronado."Coronado," as a captive audience is told by "T. Rex," who drives one of the trolley tour buses that wind their serpentine way through the San Diego area and over the graceful arc of the quarter-century-old San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, "is the sort of town Meredith Willson would have liked."
It is, in other words, a paragon of the hometown, a West Coast version of the fictional River City, 76 trombones and all that. This is in part because it still possesses a tidy, comfortable turn-of-the-century aura, though it is also undeniably a fully modern community.
"Coronado is a unique example of a town that literally grew up around a hotel," notes Gerry MacCartee.
The Victorian-era Hotel del Coronado is the centerpiece of a walking tour MacCartee or her partner, Nancy Cobb, operators of Coronado Touring, lead just before midday three times a week. The town was founded a century ago during the construction of this elegant vacation spot beside the Pacific, grew up beside it and thrives in large part because the Hotel del Coronado remains a prime magnet for tourists, whether they opt to stay there or not.
But Coronado no longer revolves solely around "the Del," as it is so often called in conversation.
For one thing, there are now a dozen-plus other hotels and motels in town, tailored to a variety of budgets. These include two other luxury resorts with flavors entirely different from the Del's - the marina-oriented Loews Coronado Bay to the south on the Strand and the French-influenced Le Meridien/San Diego at Coronado on the northeast shore. Both have outstanding views of gleaming, glittering downtown San Diego, just across the bay.
With a daytime temperature averaging 70 degrees year-round, Coronado is a palm- and Norfolk pine-dotted city of about 25,000. The downtown straddles Orange Avenue, once the broad trolley-and-traffic route from the bay opposite San Diego to the Hotel del Coronado a few miles away on the Pacific shore. There is also a new specialty shopping center, the Ferry Landing Marketplace, perched, as its name implies, where the ferry from San Diego docks.
Tourism is the major industry, but about half of the community's residents work for the military, says Joe Timko of Coronado Visitor Information. The Navy has a strong presence in the San Diego area, of course, and is represented in and around Coronado by such installations as the North Island Naval Air Station, which occupies most of the tip of the peninsula above the city, and the naval amphibious station where the Navy's SEALS are based.
Though only a short hop across the bay from bustling San Diego, Coronado has a character all its own and makes an excellent travel alternative. All of San Diego's main attractions are easily within striking distance - from Sea World and the San Diego Zoo to the harbor and nearby Tijuana, Mexico - yet Coronado has history and picturesque seascapes that set it apart.
The city's focal point, even after a century, is the Hotel del (see related story on T8), but there are many other options when visiting in Coronado. Here are a few ideas.
- A walking tour of Coronado. For an intimate look at the city of Coronado and its history, it would be hard to beat the escorted stroll through town offered by MacCartee and Cobb.
Their tour begins across the street from the Hotel del Coronado at the Glorietta Bay Inn - at one time millionaire John D. Spreckel's main residence.
On a sunny, springlike Saturday, MacCartee led one such walk through a section of the city.
"Coronado," she says, "is named for four islands, Los Coronados, the crowned ones," visible in the Pacific to the southwest. "They were originally part of Spain, and now are part of Mexico. That's why you see crowns ad nauseam here."
Indeed, wander down Orange Avenue or leaf through the telephone book and the truth of her statement is borne out: Crown Audio/Visual, Crown City Inn, Crown City Photographers, Crown Veterinary Hospital.
Spreckels bought out Babcock and Story in 1890, but his interest in San Diego and Coronado apparently grew by leaps and bounds after the shakeup of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He had architect Harrison Albright - an innovator with steel and concrete - build two solid homes in Coronado. His main residence was due east of the Hotel del, and is now the Glorietta Bay Inn.
One of the residence's most striking spaces is the music room, now a small conference area. Spreckels played the organ. The room for the instrument, which had 2,000 pipes in the basement, had French doors that opened onto the garden.
When he played, "the sound would reverberate through the town."
MacCartee passed around a framed postcard from just after the turn of the century. "This man owns everything out here," said the writer, and it was the truth.
The Hotel del Coronado, built of five kinds of wood, MacCartee says, was a resort for the mobile wealthy, "and that's who came: the Astors, the Vanderbilts. Rooms were $2, with $10 suites." The men entered via the lobby, with its masculine dark look of oak from Illinois. There they could drop the smelly harvest from the day's hunt. The women had another entrance. "It was very sexually divided then." These days the lobby is used by all, and one of the community's great traditions is a 30-foot high Christmas tree decorated in its center.
"This hotel seems to have been built for Christmas," says MacCartee. "It's my favorite time of year here."
Off the lobby is the Crown Dining Room, with its L. Frank Baum-designed chandeliers and huge, unsupported dome, built without pillars or nails ("they used pegs," MacCartee says). To the back is the lovely Garden Patio, surrounded by the Del's balconied structure and used for luncheons, buffets and weddings.
The Hotel del Coronado is "one of the largest wooden buildings in the world still used as a hotel." Babcock and Story had a sprinkler system devised for the building, using salt water. Of course, more modern equipment has since been installed.
"There's not a closet here without a sprinkler head," MacCartee says. "There's never been a major fire - only small ones in the bakery and shop."
Behind the Hotel del Coronado stretches a beautiful beach, and to the north is Ocean Boulevard, once lined with old mansions, only a few of which remain. At first there was no real beach along the boulevard. The Coronado Sea Wall was built and, after dredging by the Navy, the beach naturally built up, as the sand was deposited by the natural currents. To the north and west is Point Loma; in between is the only entrance to San Diego Bay.
Residential Coronado is pleasant and historic in its own right. As people began to settle in the town, they brought diverse architectural preferences with them. Loma Street, for instance, is lined with cottages and bungalows showcasing the Queen Anne, Mediterranean and Cape Cod styles.
Orange Avenue, the main street, was originally lined with orange trees. The route is 140 feet wide, with traffic now flowing alongside grassy medians where once the trolley trundled.
The street is small-town friendly, but cosmopolitan. One handsome gray edifice once housed Spreckels' bank, as well as a theater. Across the street is the El Cordova Hotel, now housing shops as well as rented rooms. Businesses along Orange Avenue offer the whole urban panoply, from grocery and discount stores to barber shops, book stores and restaurants and a bakery with open-air seats and tables on the sidewalks.
- Coronado Beach Museum. For more about the community's history, be sure to drop by the small Coronado Beach Museum, located in a Victorian-era house on Loma Street, just off Orange Avenue. Photographs, placards and displays outline the events and developments of a busy century.
One corner spotlights the days of the ferry boats, which served Coronado and San Diego between 1886 and 1969, carrying people, buggies, cars and buses. When the San Diego/Coronado Bay Bridge was completed the ferrys were discontinued, only to be reinstituted - for walk-on passengers only - a few years ago.
- The San Diego Bay Ferry. A stocky ferry, the Cabrillo, serves pedestrians and bicyclists who need transport between Coronado and San Diego's hotel district. The 20-minute crossing (departing on the hour from San Diego, on the half-hour from Coronado) is well worth the $1 it costs each way. (It's a $10 taxi ride from mid-San Diego into Coronado across the bridge.)
- Theater in Coronado. Yes, Coronado has a moviehouse - but it also has a community theater, the Coronado Playhouse, and - new to town - Lamb's Players Theatre. The Lamb's ensemble recently moved from National City and renovated a theater in downtown Coronado's historic Neoclassical Spreckels Building. Its 1995 season has begun with a pastel-romantic staging of Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's musical play "She Loves Me," which predates Bock and Harnick's megahit, "Fiddler on the Roof." Upcoming Lamb's presentations will include "The Miracle Worker," "Tintypes" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
- The Old Town Trolley. A convenient trolley bus system links Coronado and San Diego (as do buses of the Metropolitan Transit System). On the Old Town Trolley, tour director-drivers comment on the passing cityscape, and the vehicles stop at locations including the Hotel del Coronado, other major hotels on the San Diego side, the Horton Plaza mall downtown, Old Town State Park, the museum complex in Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo.
- Dining out. Coronado has developed a reputation for fine dining. The major resort hotels - the Hotel del, Loews and Le Meridien - have garnered critical kudos for their fare. The city itself has about 50 restaurants, from the cozy ambience and gourmet cuisine of Chez Loma downtown to the Hawaiian-themed Peohe's at the Ferry Landing.
- Other recreation options. Islandlike Coronado has 28 miles of coastline, on San Diego Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Among its attractions is Silver Strand State Beach Park, which offers RV facilities - and which is packed in the summertime. Coronado has harbors tailored to boating, fishing and yachting. A 15-mile bike path begins under the San Diego/Coronado Bay Bridge and continues down the Silver Strand. Rental bikes are available in town and at the major hotels. The city has a 128-acre public golf course, 18 municipal tennis courts and an Olympic-size community pool. In addition, the Naval Air Station - the birthplace of U.S. military aviation - offers 3-hour narrated tours.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
For information
Contact Coronado Visitor Information, 1111 Orange Ave., Suite A, Coronado, CA 92118-2112. Telephone: 1-800-622-8300.
Coronado Touring's walking tour begins at 11 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at the Glorietta Bay Inn, across from the Hotel del Coronado. The stroll takes about an hour and a half and costs $5 per person. Reservations are not necessary.