The Ocean Beach hotel that rose with a boom and fell with it

For a brief moment in the 1880s, Ocean Beach was supposed to become one of San Diego’s grand seaside resorts.

At the center of that dream stood an imposing Victorian hotel at the foot of Niagara Avenue, overlooking the ocean.

It was called the Cliff House.

Built by real estate promoters William H. “Billy” Carlson and Frank J. Higgins, the Cliff House was designed to attract vacationers, prospective land buyers, and anyone willing to believe that the remote stretch of Point Loma was about to become San Diego’s next great resort destination.

The timing seemed perfect.

San Diego was in the middle of a spectacular real estate boom, and Carlson and Higgins were selling lots in their new Ocean Beach subdivision. They filed their subdivision map on May 28, 1887, and promoted the area with elaborate public events, including mussel roasts, bands, free ice cream, rental bathing suits, and hot-air balloons.

The developers needed something impressive to give their new community a centerpiece.

They built the Cliff House.

Construction was completed in January 1888 at a reported cost of $85,000 — an enormous investment for the time. The Victorian-style building featured round towers and bays crowned with steeply pitched roofs, along with broad wraparound porches overlooking the ocean and beach. Its design bore a modest resemblance to the Hotel del Coronado, another grand resort that had opened just a few years earlier.

The hotel was more than a place to spend the night.

It was part of the sales pitch.

Carlson and Higgins wanted people to see Ocean Beach as a destination — and perhaps decide they wanted to own a piece of it.

But there was a problem.

Getting there was difficult.

Ocean Beach was a remote destination, and transportation was one of the biggest obstacles facing the new development. Carlson and Higgins had grand plans for a railroad connecting the community with San Diego, but financing problems reduced the project to a short line between Roseville and Ocean Beach.

Eventually, that railroad did reach Ocean Beach.

Passengers could take a ferry across San Diego Bay to Roseville, on Point Loma, then board the Ocean Beach Railroad for the trip to the Cliff House. The railroad was launched on April 16, 1888, and the first train actually reached the Cliff House the following day.

It didn’t last long.

Carlson had leased a steam locomotive from the Pacific Coast Steam Co., but failed to pay the required rent. The company eventually took action against the railroad’s equipment, and the line ended after only about three months.

The timing could hardly have been worse.

San Diego’s real estate boom collapsed in 1888, and the ambitious development at Ocean Beach was caught in the crash. The city’s population plunged, banks failed, debts went unpaid, and properties were abandoned. The development Carlson and Higgins had envisioned stalled.

For years, Ocean Beach returned to something closer to what it had been: a remote destination for picnics and summer outings.

The Cliff House survived longer than its creators’ real estate dream.

Visitors continued to use the hotel, but the development never became the booming resort community its promoters had envisioned.

By the mid-1890s, the Cliff House itself was gone.

A fire destroyed the hotel, eliminating Ocean Beach’s only lodging and bringing an end to one of the most ambitious chapters in the community’s early history.

The neighborhood would eventually find a different path.

Beginning in 1907, D.C. Collier helped transform Ocean Beach into a more permanent community. His development efforts included grading streets and installing water, gas, and electricity infrastructure, followed by a streetcar line and a two-room schoolhouse.

But the Cliff House belonged to an earlier vision — one in which a spectacular hotel, a railroad and a booming real estate subdivision would transform a remote stretch of Point Loma almost overnight.

For a few years, the hotel stood above the Pacific as proof that its promoters believed the future had already arrived.

It hadn’t.

But the Cliff House left behind something lasting: a chapter in the story of how Ocean Beach became Ocean Beach.

Read more history stories here. Do you have a story to tell? Send an email to DebbieSklar@cox.net.

Sources:

• City of San Diego, Ocean Beach Community Plan and Local Coastal Program Appendix C: “Historic Context Statement.”
• San Diego History Center, “Transit in San Diego: ASCE Anniversary Project.”
• San Diego History Center, “San Diego’s First Railroad.”
• San Diego History Center, “The Glory Years, 1865–1899.”
• Coastal Caretakers letter to City of San Diego Planning Commission, dated Aug. 27 2024.

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