From Spanish rancho to hard-core Marines In 1942, the Ninth Marine Division marched in and took over what had been the Santa Margarita y Las Flores Ranch. The Second World War had begun and the …

Gordon Smith wrote feature stories for the Reader from 1978 through 1987. Editor's picks of Smith's Reader stories: Inside the Padres' lockers Tony Gwynn sat in a canvas-backed chair and peered into the wooden cubicle …

The blackest of crimes committed against Warner Ranch Indians Lummis rode past sturdy, whitewashed adobe houses with thatched roofs. When he reached the center of the village, anxious eyes approached. The Cupeños were desperate for …

The glories of San Diego's trolley system Buses are rough; the passengers fall down easier. With the streetcars, you knew where they were—smooth starts and stops. They weren’t swaying back and forth—therefore, less accidents. And …

Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. My Triumph, my defeat Five years later I still …

We finally offered to buy a two-bedroom house in Kensington for $133,000, only to be outbid at the last moment by an anonymous real-estate agent (who, we were told, considered the property a bargain).

Tony Gwynn sat in a canvas-backed chair and peered into the wooden cubicle in front of him. “What’s in my locker?” he asked, repeating the question that had been posed to him. “Well, here’s a …

The coils of angel-hair pasta are arranged neatly on beds of red lettuce and adorned with gleaming shrimp. Baskets of thickly cut potatoes bubble in the fryer. A plastic container full of fresh jambalaya sits …

The two young men were dressed in Gestapo-like uniforms, complete with military hats, boots, and black-leather pistol holsters. They introduced a resolution that favored Die Weltbund — their home planet. The representative from the Legion …

Loading story body...

"It is an Engelmann oak, a species found in the inland valleys of San Diego County. There are stands of the oaks in Riverside County and a few in Los Angeles but none exist farther north.”

One night Earp returned to the house on Third Avenue and told Sadie that a man “had sort of donated” a racehorse to him in a poker game. Earp raced it at the old Pacific Beach Racetrack.

There are some very strange things in the archives of the San Diego Natural History Museum.

something goes here, and here

Crime Visits Balboa Park Police patrol on the Laurel Street bridge Just how safe is the park these days? It was 5:20 in the morning when Charles Hollinquest, a security guard at the Old Globe …

At 6:33 p.m. the radio in the Life Flight operations center at UCSD Medical Center in Mission Hills crackles: two accidents have occurred in the East County. In Alpine, a young boy has fallen off …

People in National City still shake their heads when they talk about the mailer. And if, after the mayoral election two years from now, the mayor of National City is no longer Kile Morgan — …

Everything is pretty quiet down here, until suddenly a siren goes off on one of those little walkie-talkies that Garside has on his belt. It’s a code two, he says, which means someone smells smoke.

The flexible joints allow a twenty-story skyscraper to sway one or two feet during an earthquake, but ask anyone who was in the Cuyamaca Club on the afternoon of April 8, 1968, how much two feet is.

In one corner of Kerry Damskey’s office is a counter littered with glass tubes, graduated cylinders. Bunsen burners, and small bottles with labels on them such as “Kesosol" and “T27 Lot 2.” The counter is …

George McCain lives by himself in an old Airstream trailer beneath a eucalyptus tree, about half a mile from S-2, and after leaving Vallecito station Remeika and I drive up and bang on the trailer s door.

There is something startling about the place called Hakwin: in the midst of this mountain valley, green with manzanita, juniper, and pine, the hundred-foot-high granite ridge looms like an apparition. It is perhaps a half …

After fourteen years I had only one uncomfortable moment, one feeling of small panic. It came halfway through the advanced English class I was monitoring as an observer. Maybe it was because the class was …

Win D lay on the operating table with her belly on a pillow, her eyes closed, her sides heaving slowly and rhythmically as a nearby respirator pumped air into her lungs. A tube fastened to …

Paul Sunderland is one of the top ten volleyball players in the United States. He has spent most of his life trying to perfect his knowledge and performance of the game, but in January of …

Pat Gorse was sitting in the living room of his parents’ North Park home one night four years ago, watching Rodney Dangerfield on the Tonight Show. Suddenly it came to him: he wanted to write …

Q: Who wants to build dams across the Santa Margarita? A: The town of Fallbrook, the Marines, and a number of politicians. Q: Is this really such a great idea? The Santa Margarita River crosses …

Jack Divine banked his single-engine Cessna into a steep turn over the town of San Felipe, Baja California, squinting through the sunlight that glared on the plane’s windows. From an altitude of only 1000 feet …

Smokey Gaines slid into a booth in a dimly lit Chinese restaurant one Monday afternoon not long ago, scanned the menu for about five seconds, and then laid it down. The restaurant is one of …

Place the following in order of importance: (A) Food (B) World peace (C) A lanceolated warbler — from Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book The call came through to Elizabeth Copper’s home in Coronado on …

On February 13, 1980, a storm system from the Pacific Ocean moved across Sun Diego and dumped one-third inch of rain in less than twenty-four hours. It was a hard storm in a year that …

When Charles Kap was nine years old, his father took him to see the movie The Buccaneer, starring Charlton Heston as Andrew Jackson and Yul Brynner as the pirate Lafitte. The movie is about the …

When the preliminary bankruptcy hearing for the Ray L. Huffman Construction Company was held last month, extra chairs had to be carried into the courtroom to accommodate the crowd of creditors, attorneys, former associates, and …

Two hundred miles northeast of San Diego a long gray cement building stands at the southern end of Lake Havasu on the Colorado River. From a distance the building looks a little like a barge …

Hecht remembers the mud baths and the three-dollar massages, the dance bands and the little guy from International Harvester who tried to pick her up one night in the bar.

On a gray February morning not long ago, in the second-floor dining room of the University Club in downtown San Diego, about twenty businessmen who belong to a group known as the Metropolitan Club pushed …

In a bathroom near the UCSD visual arts department’s main office is a scrawl of the type that has become a familiar sight on the walls of public restrooms from California to New York. Executed …

Hubbs and a few others sampled the meat of the whale. It was “of good flavor and tender when roasted or fried,’’ Hubbs reported. “About one hundred pounds were eaten by local residents.”

A sign outside of the Marina Inn in Imperial Beach proclaims it as the most southwesterly bar in the United States. It is no idle bit of public relations. From the inn’s parking lot you …

“Here’s a cancer right in the middle of the city, and it’s untreated; it’s even been allowed to fester. And there’s been almost complete official and media silence on the whole thing for four years. …

The day I drove out to look at the Loma Citas water tower the weather was hot and hazy. I had never been to see the tower before, but I didn’t have any trouble finding …

Our plane taxis out onto the runway and comes to a halt, facing west down the long asphalt ramp of Lindbergh Field. Mike in hand, the pilot, Carlos Richardson, contacts the control tower for clearance. …

The first year Andy Mauro went into the flower-growing business he lost $30,000. He didn’t know when to plant his cuttings, when to spray the young plants for insects, even when to harvest the blooms. …

The mountain appears to have been hit by a bomb. Smoke is billowing upward in thick streams that flow together into one vast column hundreds of feet high. On the hillside below, bright orange flames …

Flexibility and strength. Range of motion. These are the keys to avoiding any athletic injury, or so claims Phil Tyne. Tyne owns an athletic club in downtown San Diego and he is also the conditioning …

An automobile moving at fifty-five miles per hour requires twenty-one minutes to travel up Interstate 5 from downtown San Diego to the Carmel Valley Road exit. Two gas stations and a Sambo’s restaurant are the …

“See that skinny cow there?’’ he asks, pointing to a thin, gray cow that eyes us steadily as she chews. “There’s something wrong with her — probably ate some nails or wire or something.

He is a tall, bespectacled, grandfatherly with a mischievous laugh. His hands are large, as befits someone who was a football receiver in his college days. On the wall of his office in UCSD’s Bonner …

It started out as a typical spring day in San Diego: sunny skies, a gentle breeze coming in off the ocean, and light but persistent smog. Virginia Engler, a meteorologist for the San Diego County …

As a ten-year-old exploring the dark corners of my family’s garage, I once found a huge knife sheathed in a worn leather case. It had a rawhide handle and an eight-inch steel blade. When I …