The first European to set foot in what is now California, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, came ashore in 1542 at La Playa, probably at a small rocky peninsula called Ballast Point.

[2] When a permanent European settlement was established a few miles inland in 1769, La Playa served as the town's "harbor", actually an anchorage where cargo was loaded and unloaded via small boats.

[3] The anchorage at La Playa continued to serve as San Diego’s main port until the establishment of New Town (current downtown) in the 1870s.

[4] In his book Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana Jr. describes how sailors in the 1830s camped on the beach at La Playa and hunted for wood and rabbits in the hills of Point Loma.

Nothing visible remains of the original sites, which are accessible to the public during the annual Cabrillo Festival[2] and to scholars for occasional archeological digs.