Myths & Legends of Downtown
If the tranquility of San Diego’s seaside communities has caused their rich histories to fade into the silence and surf, the glittering, seedy mosaic of history at the geographic heart of San Diego is all but wiped away by the wrecking-ball roar of today and the piledriver promise of future development. Through hard work and great good fortune, San Diego has saved many of its historical landmarks, but few patrons of club Aubergine know that the handsome century-old building was once the office of Ah Kwin, the de facto "Mayor of Chinatown," as well as a front for a gambling hall and opium den, or that the classic Laurel Street Bridge used to span a river that once ran in the bed of the 163, or the grim litany of hardship and suffering that some say reaches out to terrorize the living on the Star Of India.

Early in its history, San Diego vied with San Francisco as the jewel in the Californian crown. Though San Diego was the site of the first Spanish mission, the upstart city soon fell behind — victim, perhaps, to the same lotus-eating lethargy that countless 19th-century tracts warned was caused by the mild climate. While San Francisco became the roaring hub of the new state and the capital bounced around the Bay Area before settling in Sacramento, San Diego remained a sleepy backwater, content to take in busted prospectors and Western legends, at the end of the trail.

One such settler was former Sheriff of Tombstone and iconic frontier legend Wyatt Earp. The retired lawman set up in San Diego to run a stable of saloons in the notorious Stingaree district, fleece the locals at poker (an arcane gentleman’s game in the days of faro and fan-tan), and race his prized horse, Otto Rex, at a sleepy backwater called Del Mar. Ever the wanderer, Earp followed his fortunes to Alaska and points east before retiring in Los Angeles to enjoy the worship of fledgling Hollywood. To the disappointment of history buffs and souvenir-mongers, nobody in San Diego shot at him.

San Diego’s own brief gold rush fizzled, but the town swiftly prospered by its harbor and abundant natural beauty. Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., came to San Diego with his wife, Fannie, to replace the Horton Grand with a new hotel named for his father, but he was traumatized by her abrupt death, and left the unfinished project to languish. Four years later, Grant found true love again and returned to open the hotel, and live in an opulent Victorian mansion up the street from his namesake. Grant later sold the property to the developers who razed it and built the skyscraping El Cortez Hotel in 1927.

In its heyday, the El Cortez was the playground of the rich and famous, but it was also where the enigmatic Black Dahlia spent her last weekend before meeting her grisly end in Hollywood. For decades, the El Cortez lingered, an abandoned shadow in the city’s midst. From the society page, the El Cortez plunged to the dregs of the police blotter. The once-famous playground of the elite remained a derelict, neither renovated nor destroyed, and host to transients, prostitution, and drugs. When the El Cortez was finally rescued and converted into $350,000 condos, says Andrea Rustad of San Diego Ghostly Tours In History, a curious trend crept up. "In order to sell it as this opulent property, they scrubbed every scary, ghostly, or hideous thing that ever happened off the Web." If any ghosts of the past haunt the halls of the El Cortez, the realtors have a muzzle on them.

The International Order of Oddfellows building at 6th and Market was once the Gaslamp Plaza Suites, where infamous gangster Al Capone stayed on his way to Tijuana to bet on jai alai. He favored the Gaslamp for its convenient underground tunnels, and had a tiny birdcage elevator installed for quick getaways, which was removed last year by overzealous fire marshals. The tunnels underneath the old hotel now house the popular Frightmare On Market Street Halloween attraction. Painters working in the basement balked at working after mysterious handprints in white dust or black machinist’s oil began to appear on the walls and stairs.

Masonic legend has it that a cornerstone of the old Oddfellows building also contains a sarcophagus with a rare, ancient coin, secret Masonic documents, and a stone from Solomon’s Temple. Over the years, many have tried to divine the treasure-stone’s location, but Rustad had an insider point it out. "The building had been added to since it was first built in 1892, so the cornerstone is on the back side, but it’s not the corner, anymore." Truly ghoulish treasure hunters might be interested to know that, in keeping with Masonic tradition, some 11 former Masons are also interred beneath the building, resting comfortably.

Across the harbor, the palatial Hotel Del Coronado floats like a fantastical mirage. L. Frank Baum wrote four of his Oz books at the hotel, and architecturally savvy readers insist he merely dyed the Del green for his fabulous Emerald City. In his papers, Baum described the orange clay railroad track that bore guests to the Hotel Del as the "Golden Road To Paradise," an obvious inspiration for his Yellow Brick Road.

A less happy guest was a young lady who checked into Room 302 on November 24, 1892 under the name Lonnie Anderson Bernard of Detroit. Visibly ill, she waved off concerned staff with the claim that her brother, a physician, would come to care for her. Bernard went to the store to purchase quinine, a cure-all once supposed to induce labor in unwanted pregnancies, and a .44 caliber bulldog revolver. Her luggage arrived on the fourth day, but no brother.

On the rainswept fifth morning of her stay, she was found dead (and perfectly dry) on the stairs to the beach with the gun beside her. The coroner ruled the death a suicide, even though the bullet removed from her head was a .38. The mystery deepened as inquiries turned up no Lonnie Bernard in Detroit. The search for the identity of the "Beautiful Stranger" became a sensation. Suspicion ran wild, even pointing to the hotel manager, until a tip came from Iowa. A man claiming to be her grandfather identified her as Kate Morgan, but never came through on a promise to pay for her funeral. Morgan was buried in a pauper’s grave at Mount Hope Cemetery.

The truth never came clear, but Rustad has puzzled out an intriguing scenario. "Kate and her husband Tom Morgan were con artists. They would pose as sister and brother, and she would entice a wealthy young man to fall for her, then persuade him to lose at gambling with her ‘brother’ to prove his worth. When they got enough from the poor sucker, they left town. She wanted a family, but Tom, who was ten years older, wanted to keep up the con. They were supposed to meet at the Hotel Del to decide what to do... and yes, Kate Morgan was pregnant."

The ghost of Kate Morgan has been seen by many guests of the hotel in the century since her death, but the roaming spirit seldom makes a fuss. But in 1957, when the hotel hosted the shooting of Some Like It Hot, someone constantly attacked the promotional materials featuring starlet Marilyn Monroe, which stood where the tormented Kate Morgan had paced, waiting for her brother... perhaps the ghostly warning from one ill-used beauty to another?

Of all San Diego’s symbolic landmarks, few are more familiar, or misunderstood, as the Star Of India. Though her history never directly touched San Diego, she remains a floating reminder of the hardships and uncertainty all immigrants once faced, in setting out for a new home across the ocean. The polished decks and towering masts cut a gallant image in the dazzling sunlight, but belowdecks, the Star’s cabins and corridors form a gloomy netherworld that, if the legends are true, boast more ghosts than a whole block of Whaley Houses.

Mike Shanahan of the San Diego Maritime Museum is an expert on Star history, but he demurs at calling it haunted. "For me, it’s a home away from home, but I can see how beingon that ship in the dark could be kind of creepy."

Built on the Isle of Man and commissioned as the Euterpe in 1863, the three-masted windjammer plied the mercantile routes to India, but her maiden voyage ended in a violent mutiny. On the second attempt, a cyclone snapped the mainmast, and the crippled ship limped into the Bay of Bengal. The unlucky ship was sold and refitted to carry emigrants to New Zealand.

But tragedy struck again. The captain, a cashiered naval officer and despondent alcoholic, tried to take his own life. Rustad serves up the chilling tale with a generous side of relish. "The captain cut his own throat on the deck, and was discovered in a pool of blood. They put him in the first mate’s bunk and kept a suicide watch, but in the dead of night, he tore out his stitches, and completed his suicide." The first mate’s cabin remains at a constant 74 degrees, and guests on overnight educational tours who slept — or tried to — in the cabin have reported hearing heavy booted footsteps on the poopdeck overhead, and one complained of a crushing pressure at her throat.

John Campbell, a teenaged stowaway from Glasgow, died when he fell from the sail rigging. Campbell loved to play a version of tag called piggy-piggy-touch-wood, in which the hunted could sneak up on the hunter and draw an S on his back to become safe. "People who walk down in that part of the ship," reports Rustad, "will sometimes feel an S drawn on their backs."

The uneasy spirit of an anonymous Chinese laborer haunts the chain locker on the ’tween deck. He spoke no English, and made no complaint as he fed the 35-pound links of anchor chain into their storage lockers when the anchor was raised. One unlucky day, the crew failed to heed the Chinaman’s cry to stop, and buried him in tons of gnashing iron. Visitors claim to have seen a phantom and heard a voice speaking an untranslatable language.

If the Star’s sailing career seemed cursed, her retirement proved her "the luckiest ship in the world," as Mike Shanahan puts it. "The old iron ships were cut up for scrap, and if you see a silent movie where an old wooden ship gets blown up and sunk, it was probably one of the old Alaska Packers."

She was saved and brought to San Diego in 1927 by local investors who bought it for $9,000 as a centerpiece for a proposed aquarium. She survived the Navy’s plan to destroy her in World War II and, after an op-ed piece in the San Diego Union shamed the community, renovation began in 1959, ending just in time for the Star to sail for the 1976 Bicentennial. Though the Star’s profile is a familiar fixture in our front yard, it connects bucolic, sunny San Diego to faraway places and bygone times.
— Cody Goodlfellow, photography by Vincent Knakal