WELCOME TO THE
BY M A R T I N L I N D SAY
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Nearly two centuries later, the fertile San Diego River valley was home to barley farms, cattle ranches, and dairies. It was an agricultural oasis surrounded by the newly developed Mission Bay Aquatic Park to the west, San Diego Bay’s Shelter Island to the south, and master-planned communities Linda Vista and Clairemont to the north.
for a new 46-unit Ranch style resort he called Town and Country Motor Hotel. Unlike his competitors’ hotels in downtown San Diego, his new garden hotel was conveniently located at the cloverleaf of the Sixth Street extension and the new supermodern Highway 80 (now SR-63 and I-8). It had plenty of room for a restaurant, bar, pool, tennis, and shuffleboard courts. And expansion. Town and Country was the first hotel in Mission Valley, opening on December 25, 1953. It had all the amenities. Nearby were twenty miles of bridle trails and golfing and the Mission Valley Country Club. And the unique gimmick of “courtesy” coffeemakers in each room. What luxury!
Mission Valley was the perfect spot for post-war midcentury growth in San Diego, or thought entrepreneur Charles Harry Brown (1917-1966). So he bought 221 acres
Five years later, the city eased height and capacity restrictions within Mission Valley, and a building boom soon followed. Brown and a group of hoteliers named the area Hotel Circle.
he San Diego River valley, or Emat Kuseyaay, has been the home of the Kumeyaay people for millennia. Spanish explorers called it La Cañada de San Diego. We know it as Mission Valley, after Mission de Alcalá, established by the Franciscans in 1769.
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