El Cajon

El Cajon is the seat of commerce, culture, and government in the East County, and has been for more than 150 years. A thriving city of about 95,000, its incorporated area encompasses approximately 14 square miles of land a little more than 430 feet above sea level – a giant, protected basin surrounded by foothills that earned it the name El Cajon, or 'big box.'

The unique topography of the Big Box Valley made it an ideal site for pastureland and, later, fertile cropland. For thousands of years, the indigenous people of San Diego County inhabited the valley and beyond. Soon after the Spaniards arrived, the mission padres recognized its special qualities and moved their cattle herds there. Driven from their lands, the Kumeyaay took refuge in the hills to the east.

More than a century later, in 1845, the land would undergo another change in management, and usher in a new era of settlement and cultivation with the arrival of the Americans.

The city of El Cajon was incorporated in 1912, a 1 1/4 square mile area whose epicenter was the intersection of Main and Magnolia. Many of the fledgling city's prominent businessmen, such as Arthur Ballantyne, were eventually honored with place and street names, but the men and women who are perhaps most responsible for the city's development have faded into historical footnotes: Pico, Estudillo, Lankershim, and Knox.

Dona Maria Antonio Estudillo may have been on the good end of one of the best real estate transactions in San Diego history. Church lands had been taken over by the Spanish dons, and governor Pio Pico was practically holding a fire sale on mission property.

The new Mexican government owed her husband $500, and Pico eliminated the debt by issuing Estudillo the third-largest land grant in the county in 1845 – 11 square leagues (over 48,000 acres) of ranch and vineyard property, known as El Cajon Rancho, that would eventually become Lakeside, Santee, El Cajon, Bostonia, Johnstown, Glenview, Flinn Springs, and part of Grossmont.

Estudillo and her husband were absentee landlords, and spotty settlement (squatters) tied the property up in land disputes for many years. The first official record of an American settlement was a schoolroom in 1870, on a homestead at Park and Magnolia.

San Francisco businessman Issac Lankershim purchased the bulk of the Estudillo Rancho in 1868, intending to grow wheat, and subdivided and sold many parcels as soon as his title was cleared in 1875. Between the soil and the climate, El Cajon soon became the agrarian heartland of San Diego County as Lankershim and his buyers realized almost anything could be cultivated. The area rapidly became a center for citrus, avocados, grapes, and especially raisins.

From pastureland to cropland to commercial center, the city evolved into a metropolitan center primarily due to an observant New England transplant who recognized the first principle of real estate: location, location, location.

Amaziah L. Knox, Lanksershim's wheat farm manager, noticed that the teamsters transporting equipment, gold, and other freight back and forth between Julian and downtown San Diego always made camp at what would become the corner of Main and Magnolia. In 1876, Knox built a small hotel – the first commercial building.

By 1882, Knox had made several additions and added a 2-story annex, and by the turn of the century the two blocks of Main Street that comprised the city center boasted a general store, meat market, two hotels, harness shop, pharmacy, post office, and blacksmith, as well as several other businesses.

Following incorporation in 1912, the city continued to expand. By 1940, the population had doubled to 1,471, and by 1950 it was close to 6,000. By 1960, with the completion of Highway 8, the incorporated area had blossomed to 9.8 square miles and the population had jumped to 37,618.