[1] Founded in 1928 by businessman and civic leader George W. Marston,[2][3] the San Diego Historical Society was housed in the Mission style Junípero Serra Museum on Presidio Hill, the site of the earliest settlement in San Diego and California.

[4] In 1982, the San Diego Historical Society moved its collections and research library to the Casa de Balboa building[5] in Balboa Park (maintaining the Serra Museum as an auxiliary museum and education center), and the Society changed its name to the San Diego History Center in 2010.

[1][6] Of special note among the museum's collections are the Historic Clothing and Textile Collection, which includes over 7,000 items illustrating the history of dress from the late 18th century to the present,[7] and the San Diego Fine Art Collection, notable for its early 20th century plein air paintings, with works by Maurice Braun, Alfred Mitchell, Charles Fries, Belle Baranceanu, Charles Reiffel, Alice Ellen Klauber, and Donal Hord.

The Document Archives, the region’s largest collection of historical materials, holds over 45 million documents including public and architectural records, books, maps, scrapbooks, manuscripts, newspapers, ephemera, diaries and oral histories.

It includes a large number of 19th and early 20th century images of the San Diego region acquired in 1979 from the Union Title & Trust Insurance Company; important additions to the collection in the 1980s and 1990s include the entire collection of the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper prior to 1981.