Joyce Beers Her name appears on our community center in the Uptown District, but who was Joyce Beers? She was an active and community-minded woman who was instrumental in shaping the early organizational elements of the Hillcrest. And she was a proponent of many projects that changed the face of our neighborhood.

One of her favorite sayings: “A 50¢ tree should be planted in a $5 hole.” Katherine Olivia Sessions (1857-1940) was known to many as “Kate.” During her long career in San Diego (which began as a teacher) she became a world-recognized horticulturist, florist, nurserywomen and landscape designer, Kate imported, introduced, propagated and popularized hundreds of […]

Amid a scattering of homes and handful of businesses to the east, our community started being called “Hillcrest” in 1907 thanks to a 40-year-old entrepreneur. Real estate speculators had identified the scrubland for future urbanization and laid out subdivisions as early as the 1870s, but most of the vicinity still remained a jackrabbit hunting ground […]

The 1920 census shows Hillcrest resident and doctor Gwladys Morgan, 39, living at 3768 Eighth Street (now called avenue) with her older sister Mabel Elliott, also a physician, Mabel’s teenage son David and the girls’ younger sister Janette. Their large home still stands near the Robinson Street onramp to Highway 163 south. Gwladys was also […]

Hazel Wood Waterman (1865-1948) may never have received a license to hang on the wall, but she gets credit for several neighborhood landmarks including the Wednesday Club (Ivy Lane at Sixth). Hazel Wood met Waldo Sprague Waterman (1860-1903) at Berkeley while he was earning a degree in mining. His father Robert was the owner of […]

Park West’s Leo Wilson is a third generation Uptown resident — his family moved to Hillcrest 90 years ago. A 1946 article in the Pacific Coast Record referred to his grandfather who was associated with the US Grant Hotel for 34 years, as both GM and a general partner, as one of “the most successful […]

Hillcrest Women Thank you, Joyce Beers “Hillcrest will continue to be an open-minded community. It will include yuppies, it will include gays and senior citizens…”

It was a long road from St. Louis to this frontier town, but founding a hospital in San Diego became a mission for this woman of God who first received a white veil and holy habit from the Order of Mercy in 1871. At the call of Denver’s Bishop J.P. Machesion in 1882, Sister M. […]

At the age of 74 Hillcrest’s oldest businessman has a contagious smile, nine grandchildren and a remarkable set of bushy eyebrows…yet after 54 years he still repairs luggage in the back of his store. Amazingly, the namesake for John’s Fifth Avenue Luggage also finds time to garden and play the links at Singing Hills Golf […]

I began working as an artist in the late 1980’s having received my education in the visual arts at Humboldt State University (BA, 1985) and UC San Diego (MFA, 1988) In 1991 I received an individual artist fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for my “works on paper” which constituted one of a […]