Kumeyaay people did probably have a seasonal village remembered by them as Totakamalam and visited Ocean Beach periodically to harvest mussels, clams, abalone and lobsters.

[10] 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, accumulated cattle hides for export, and hunted for wood and jackrabbits in the hills of Point Loma.

During World War II, the entire southern portion of the peninsula was closed to civilians and used for military purposes, including a battery of coast artillery.

[16] Following the death in 1891 of Helena Blavatsky, its founder, Katherine Tingley moved the headquarters of the Theosophical Society to "Lomaland", a hilltop campus in Point Loma overlooking the ocean.

[17] Producing most of its own food,[18] the Society also experimented widely with planting trees and crops such as eucalyptus and avocado, giving that formerly barren part of Point Loma its current heavily wooded character.

That is where Charles Lindbergh first tested and flew his airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, which had been built in San Diego by the Ryan Aeronautical Company.

[23]) Perched atop the southern point that creates the entrance of the bay with Coronado, the small, two-story lighthouse was completed in 1854 and first lit on November 15, 1855.

At 422 feet (129 m) above sea level at the entrance of the bay, the seemingly good location for a lighthouse soon proved to be a poor choice, as fog and cloud within the marine layer often obscured the beam for ocean-going vessels.

[27][28] The top of the peninsula is fairly flat, reaches an elevation of 422 ft (129 m),[29] and is capped by much younger sandstone and conglomerate deposits from the Pleistocene era, 1 million years or less in age.

At the northern end of the peninsula the cliffs and hills become lower, disappearing entirely in Ocean Beach and the Midway area, where the San Diego River flows.

Because of fears that San Diego Bay might silt up, the river was diverted to its present course north of Point Loma by a levee built in 1877.

[32] Parts of Liberty Station and Point Loma Village are also fill land, reclaimed from sand spits and wetlands surrounding the Bay.

The only remnant of the formerly extensive wetlands in Point Loma, aside from the riverbed itself, is a city-owned nature preserve called Famosa Slough, which branches off from the river near its mouth.

[4] The streets in Point Loma Village are lined with hundreds of jacaranda trees as a result of community beautification efforts.

The newest commercial and retail area is found at Liberty Station, site of the former Naval Training Center San Diego, which also has residential and educational sections.

[35] The Midway district at the northern end of the peninsula, adjacent to the San Diego River and the I-5 and I-8 freeways, is primarily commercial and industrial with a few small residential developments.

[41] Mammals include raccoons, skunks, possums, bats, rabbits, California ground squirrels, gray foxes, and occasional coyotes.

[43] The main economic engines of Point Loma are military facilities, neighborhood-serving retail, and marine recreation, particularly yachting and deep-sea fishing.

The Navy controls approximately 1,800 acres (730 ha) of Point Loma and provides employment to about 48,000 military personnel and civilians.

The former site of the base is now Liberty Station, a 361-acre (1.46 km2) mixed-use redevelopment project that includes residential, office, retail, educational, and civic, arts and cultural districts.

[52] The Festa do Espirito Santo, or Feast of the Holy Spirit, is a religious festival put on by Point Loma's large Portuguese community.

[62] A shipyard set in Patuxent, Maryland, for The Hunt for Red October (1990) was filmed at Naval Base Point Loma.

The new library, built by Conwell Shonkwiler & Associates, was partly funded by a donation via the San Diego Foundation from the Hervey family, who had close ties to the area.

The lower floor is the largest children's library in the City of San Diego, featuring a simulated ship, reading desks shaped like surfboards, an art space and a Story Time Zone.

The library holds scheduled events such as story time for children, Thursday after school movies, and arts and crafts demonstrations.

Some portions of the Point Loma peninsula are not under the jurisdiction of the city, including the federal and military lands as well as the bayside tidelands governed by the Port of San Diego.

Post-secondary education is offered at Point Loma Nazarene University, a Christian liberal arts college whose ocean-view campus was once the home of the Theosophical Society.

Interstate 8 freeway follows the northern edge of the Point Loma peninsula, paralleling the San Diego River, and terminates a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean.

[4] Most streets in the coastal sections, both bay and ocean, are laid out in a rough grid pattern, with the oceanside blocks larger than the bayside.

The presence of hills and canyons, together with the restraints imposed by a long narrow peninsula, result in "circuitous routing of traffic and a great deal of out-of-direction travel.