SAN-Cities

All across the U.S. there are dozens of cities that prefix their name with the word “San,” and if you've ever pondered the reason why, you've come to the right place. This week Tidbits looks into the origins and some of the history surrounding these well-known towns and discovers their meanings.

• In the Spanish language, the word “San” translates “Saint.” The city of San Diego is named in tribute of Saint Didacus, a 15th-century Spanish Franciscan missionary, born Diego de San Nicolas. In 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew sailed along the coast of what is now California, where they discovered a large bay. They claimed the area for Spain, and named it San Miguel. In 1602, another Spanish explorer, Sebastian Vizcaino, renamed the area San Diego, in honor of St. Didacus. In 1769, a fort and mission were established there, the first permanent European settlement in California. The community remained small until the 1880s, when several military facilities were established there.

• San Diego is now home to the largest naval fleet in the world, and is the eighth largest city in the U.S. The city has hosted two World’s Fairs, in 1915-1916 and 1935-1936. The 1915 fair’s preserved buildings can be found in Balboa Park. That Fair also provided the beginnings of the legendary San Diego Zoo when a menagerie of exotic animals, including kangaroos, buffalo, leopards, lions, baboons, monkeys, and parrots were borrowed from the Wonderland Amusement Park to place on exhibit. By the time the fair closed in 1916, Wonderland had closed, and the animals were kept, marking the zoo’s beginning. Today, the famous zoo experiences more than five million visitors every year.

• When the Spanish Franciscan priest Father Junipero Serra founded the San Juan Capistrano Mission in 1776, he named it in honor of Saint John of Capistrano, Italy, a theologian who at 70 years of age led a crusade against Ottoman Empire invaders in 1456. By 1806, the mission sheltered 1,000+ people, 10,000 head of cattle, and an ornate mission church.

• Every year on March 19, the “Miracle of the Swallows” occurs when migratory American cliff swallows finish a 6,000-mile flight from their winter home Goya, Argentina. The tiny birds, measuring just five inches in length, depart Goya every February 18 and arrive in California on what is now called St. Joseph’s Day.

Every year on October 23rd, the massive flock of swallows circle the city and begin their 31-day flight back to Argentina.

• Yet another Franciscan missionary lent his name to a California City, Bernardino of Siena, an Italian priest who died in 1444. San Bernardino is a city of firsts – the world’s first McDonald’s restaurant opened there in 1940, when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald founded the chain. The Rolling Stones played their first-ever U.S. concert there in 1966 at the Swing Auditorium, an establishment that was destroyed by an airplane crash on September 11, 1981. The late president Lyndon B. Johnson worked as an elevator doorman at the city’s Platt Building in 1925. The motorcycle club known as the “Hell’s Angels” got their start in San Bernardino in 1948.

• When a Spanish explorer sailed into the channel near present-day Santa Barbara in 1602, it happened to be on Saint Barbara’s feast day, a day honoring a Christian martyr who was beheaded by her father in 342 AD for refusing to renounce Christianity. Sebastian Vizcaino named the area Santa Barbara in commemoration.

• Santa Barbara has also been given the nickname “Hollywood of the North,” as hundreds of movies have been filmed there. It was also home to the world’s largest movie studio, Flying A Studios, between 1910 and 1922. Ironically, the soap opera “Santa Barbara” was not filmed there, but rather 90 miles east in Burbank. Santa Barbara is also noteworthy as the city where the Motel 6 chain was founded in 1962, at the time offering rooms at $6 per night.

• The honor of the oldest state capital in the United States belongs to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a city founded in 1610. It’s also the capital with the highest elevation at 7,199 feet above sea level, and home to the oldest surviving church, San Miguel Mission, which was built in the early 1600s.

• Before the arrival of Europeans in North America, the natives called the Santa Fe area “White Shell Water Place.” The Spaniards gave it the name of “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis”, which translates the “Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.” In fact, that remains the official full name of the city, and appears on the seal and flag of Santa Fe. The shortened “Santa Fe,” simply means “Holy Faith.” The local museum is housed in the historic adobe Place of the Governors, the oldest government building in the U.S., built in 1610.

• The city of San Antonio, Texas, the seventh-most populous city in the nation, is named after Saint Anthony of Lisbon, a Portuguese Catholic priest who died in 1231. It was founded in 1718 as a Spanish mission and fort by Catholic missionaries.

• San Antonio became the first chartered settlement in what is now Texas in 1731. The city still contains five 18th-century missions within its boundaries, one of which is the Alamo. Although we think of the Alamo as a military fortress, it was first a mission established in 1718 as Mission San Antonio de Valero for education of the nearby native population. In 1793, the church gave over control of the mission, and the area including some 30 adobe buildings became a self-governing community. It was occupied by the military in the early 1800s, who renamed it

• The Alamo was known in Spanish as simply “alamo,” probably because of a nearby grove of cottonwood trees, In 1836, it was the site of the Battle of the Alamo in the midst of the fierce Texas fight for independence. Mexican general Santa Anna marched 1,500 troops into the area to reclaim Texas and a ten-day battle ensued against the resistence of only about 100 determined Texans. The outnumbered band of brave soldiers were completely wiped out, including frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Before falling into great disrepair, the chapel served as a grocery store. In 1905, the state of Texas purchased what was left of the compound and began with its preservation. The site receives about 2.5 million visitors annually

• The city of San Fernando, California is completely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. Other cities in the San Fernando Valley agreed to be annexed by Los Angeles in the 1910s in order to gain access to L.A.’s abundant water supply, which had been created by a newly opened aqueduct. San Fernando was able to reject the annexation because of their own plentiful groundwater supply. The city is named for the nearby mission that in turn was named for Saint Ferdinand of Spain, who was King during the 13th century. □