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1958 Map of San Diego

Name: 1958 Topographic Map of San Diego
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1965
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1965

About this map

The coastal shelf of San Diego and its mountainous backcountry are captured here just as the post-war suburban boom was reshaping Southern California. The urban core around San Diego Bay and National City is balanced by a massive military footprint, including Miramar NAS, NAS North Island, and the Camp Elliott Naval Reservation. Beyond the growing residential tracts of La Mesa and El Cajon, the landscape rises sharply into the Cleveland National Forest, where high-elevation landmarks like Cuyamaca Peak watch over a network of vital water resources including El Capitan Reservoir and Barrett Lake.

A complex transportation web links the Pacific to the desert, dominated by the San Diego and Arizona Eastern RR and major thoroughfares like U. S. 80. In the east, the terrain transitions into the arid expanses of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the In-Ko-Pah Mountains. This survey documents the era before modern interstate expansions fully replaced the historic highway routes that connected coastal communities like Solana Beach and Imperial Beach to the interior.