DID YOU KNOW?

For more than 80 years, Coronado had trains coming through town at least once a week. The railroad started in 1888 with daily passenger service from downtown San Diego through National City, Chula Vista and up the Silver Strand. While regular passenger service only lasted until 1896, special excursion trains catered to visitors throughout the early 1900s, and freight trains operated until 1970 delivering supplies once or twice weekly to the Naval Amphibious Base and North Island. Started by the Coronado Beach Co. and called the Coronado Belt Line, the railway ran up Pomona Avenue toward San Diego Bay. The line was extended down First Avenue to North Island in 1918 as the military started constructing permanent buildings there. By that time, the railroad had changed hands numerous times and was owned by San Diego and Arizona Railway Co., which would become the San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway Co., a subsidiary of Southern Pacific. On March 24, 1971, a small ceremony marked the end of rail service to Coronado with the removal of a spike near the old Hotel Del Coronado boathouse, which at the time was a Chart House and now is the Bluewater Grill. The tracks were removed a few weeks later, and today there is little evidence of the railroad that ran through Coronado. ■

TOMMY LARK / CORONADO HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION