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Overview
Just over the bridge from San Diego is a small, tree-lined beach haven known as Coronado. The "island," as many locals call it, is really a peninsula connected to the mainland by a neck of land named the Silver Strand. Crown City, as it is called (Coronado means "crowned one" in Spanish), regards itself as a friendly, small town of wide leafy streets lined with Victorian homes and Californian bungalows ... and regards San Diego as somewhere else.
Along with the amicable, small-town atmosphere and near-perfect weather, Coronado proudly touts itself as a car-optional environment. The island is small enough to walk almost anywhere - it's only a mile from the San Diego Bay side of the peninsula to the ocean. There are also relatively flat paths fit for both cyclists and skaters and even more miles of bike routes along city streets.
The emblem of Coronado is the Hotel Del Coronado - a Victorian pleasure dome that instantly turned Coronado into a beach resort when it opened on the oceanfront in 1888. Other resorts followed, but today the military, not tourism, represents Coronado's largest industry. The North Island Naval Air Station, site of America's first military flying school, occupies the entire north half of Coronado, and Navy SEALs train at the Naval Amphibious Base on the south end of town.
For well over a century, Coronado's beaches have been its fortune. The main beach, Coronado Central Beach, stretches 1.5 miles behind the great houses along Ocean Boulevard. Swimmers, bodysurfers, boogie boarders, sand sculptors, tide poolers and, from December through February, whale watchers all take to the sand and sea. North Beach attracts surfers in the morning, and at the extreme north is Dog Beach, where leashless canines can frolic in the surf.
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