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North Park

Where is North Park?

For the City of San Diego, the Greater North Park Community Planning Area designated in the 1980s is the whole area in an opaque color on the map. The City picked major boundaries to define the planning area. The I-805 freeway is on the east, Park Boulevard is on the west, the hills above Mission Valley are on the north, and Juniper Street is on the south. Upas Street and 28th Street are also boundaries. “North Park” is a convenient group name because most of the area is north of Balboa Park.

The map shows historical subdivisions mapped and filed at various times by different people. The area north of University Avenue is half of the large subdivision of University Heights, which was mapped in 1888. Park Villas was mapped in two large pieces in 1870 for Joseph Nash, a San Diego pioneer who opened a general merchandise store on the New Town waterfront in 1868. Forty acres of the eastern part of Park Villas were purchased from Joseph Nash by James Hartley in 1893 which is bordered by University Avenue on the north, Dwight Street on the south, 32nd Street on the east, and Ray Street on the west. “Hartley’s North Park” is the official name for the subdivision mapped from the northern half and filed in 1912. Other real estate entrepreneurs, Joseph McFadden and George Buxton, bought the southern half and marketed it as “McFadden & Buxton’s North Park.”