[1][2] The area included the 2,130-acre (8.6 km2) Miramar Ranch, which had originally been established by newspaperman E. W. Scripps and later sold to the Jessop family.

[4] The new base was named in honor of Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny, a leader in the Mexican–American War who also served as a military governor of California.

[6] Army aircraft occasionally landed on the parade ground, but an actual airfield was not established during World War I.

[3] In 1927 the Ryan Aircraft Company used the field to weight-test the plane The Spirit of St. Louis which they were then building for Charles A. Lindbergh.

During 1929–1930 the facility was known as Airtech Field, operated by the San Diego Air Service Corp.[1] In 1932 the Navy installed a mooring mast for helium dirigibles on the base.

That mooring ended in disaster when a gust of wind carried the airship upward, killing two ground handlers and injuring a third.

[1] The airships were homeported at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, whose civic leaders had won a vigorous public relations battle with San Diego in the late 1920s to become the host of the Navy's airfield for dirigibles.

The primary mission of the base was training pilots in the use of PB4Y Liberators (B-24s), which were built by the nearby Consolidated Aircraft Company.

Rosedale Field was used for San Diego Naval Air Station's aircraft carrier plane high-altitude bombing, dive-bombing and strafing practice.