San Diego (pronounced /ˌsændiˈeɪgoʊ/) is the second-largest city in California and the eighth largest city in the United States, located along the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States. The California Department of Finance estimates the city's population at 1,353,993 as of January 1st 2009. This coastal city is also the county seat of San Diego CountyGR: 6 as well as the economic center of the San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos metropolitan area. As of 2008, this metropolitan area is the 17th-largest in the United States with a population of 3,001,072 and the 38th-largest metropolitan area in the Americas when including Tijuana, Mexico. According to Forbes the city of San Diego ranks as the fifth wealthiest in the United States.

San Diego's economy is largely composed of agriculture, biotechnology/biosciences, computer sciences, electronics manufacturing, defense-related manufacturing, financial and business services, ship-repair and construction, software development, telecommunications, and tourism. The presence of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center promotes research in biotechnology.

History

main: History of San Diego Mission San Diego de Alcalá The area of San Diego has long been inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians. The first European to visit the region was Portuguese-born explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailing under the Spanish Flag, who sailed his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain. In 1542, Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire and named the site San Miguel. In November of 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast. Arriving on his flagship San Diego, Vizcaíno surveyed the harbor and what are now Mission Bay and Point Loma and named the area for the Catholic Saint Didacus, a Spaniard more commonly known as San Diego. On November 12, 1602, the first Christian religious service of record in Alta California was conducted by Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, a member of Vizcaíno's expedition, to celebrate the feast day of San Diego.

In 1769, Gaspar de Portolà established the Fort Presidio of San Diego overlooking Old Town. Around the same time, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was founded by Franciscan friars under Father Junípero Serra. By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in and around the mission proper. After New Spain won its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1823, Mission San Diego de Alcalá's fortunes declined in the 1830s after the decree of secularization was enacted, as was the case with all of the missions under the control of Mexico. In 1847 San Diego was a destination of the march of the Mormon Battalion which built the city's first courthouse with brick.

After the Battle of San Pasqual, the end of the Mexican-American War, and the gold rush of 1848, San Diego was designated the seat of the newly-established San Diego County and was incorporated as a city in 1850. The city charter was drafted in 1889. In the years before World War I, the Industrial Workers of the World labor union conducted a free speech fight in San Diego, arousing a brutal response.