The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Winter 1983, Volume 29, Number 1
Thomas L. Scharf, Managing Editor
LOGAN HEIGHTS
Growth and Change in the Old “East End”
By FRANK NORRIS
Congress of History Community, History Award Winner
San Diego History Center 1982 Institute of History
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Logan Heights today is many things—exciting, confusing, a cross-cultural zone at once adjacent to the San Diego central business district and yet, to a large degree, distant from it. At one time the home of many of San Diego’s premier houses and families, the area has ridden a roller-coaster of economic and social fortunes and now offers a bewildering complex of single-family residences, apartments, businesses and industrial establishments. As is true with many older areas near a city center, Logan Heights today lacks definition and form; it is a necessary and perhaps inevitable victim of changing transportation systems which take place in a town subject to long-term, large-scale growth. For many years the center of San Diego’s black and Mexican-American populations, Logan Heights now shares that distinction with areas to the east and southeast and, to a lesser extent, with several other parts of the San Diego metropolitan area.
Where precisely is Logan Heights? Its historical core, where the street pattern follows the bay front rather than the compass directions, is easily distinguishable on any local road map. Similar to many urban districts, however, its boundaries have grown and divided over time. During the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, for example, various economic development programs implied that Logan Heights included the entire southeastern portion of San Diego; this definition may still be held by some San Diego residents.1 Traditionally, however, Logan Heights has usually been limited to an area bounded roughly, on the west, by Thirteenth Street and its imaginary extension to the south, on the north by Imperial Avenue, on the east by Wabash Boulevard (California State Highway 15), and on the south by San Diego Bay. Downtown and its waterfront are to the west, Sherman Heights and Golden Hill are to the north, and southeast San Diego lies to the east. …
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