University Avenue • circa 1953

  (The 1950s photos on this page appeared on the Vintage San Diego Facebook page,
credited to the Stephen Grooms collection, photographer Joe Courtney,
with a "Thank You" to Pea Hicks)



Star Cleaners • 6080 University Avenue


The Richfield Gas Station (now Arco) was our go-to station -- Julie Eskew Daniel ’64





A Google Street View taken in November 2022




  Redwood Baptist Church • 6060 University Avenue

If you look above the apartments, you will see the cut that we called Fossil Canyon.  You could dig out fossilized clams and sea snails in the cliffs.  We dug caves into the cliffs as well -- Joe Dyke '65



University Avenue Baptist Church • 6060 University Avenue • November 2022
 

 


Hillside Garden Apartments

These were the Bates Apartments, remodeled and renamed Hillside Garden Apartments many years later.  Before the apartments were built on University there was a small stream running along the hillside.  We went down to catch tadpoles.  They were collected in milk bottles to bring home and wait for the frogs.  Mom loved it.   We would have gotten crawdads too, but they clamped on our little fingers and it hurt -- Julie Eskew Daniel ’64



A Google Street View taken in November 2022
 


 

Looking southeast to Darnall Elementary and one of the Chollas Towers

Darnall Elementary was my school, we lived two blocks away.  The City eventually built a water tower on the hill near Darnall.  It’s still there today.  The boys could stand on the playground and hit the tank with small rocks -- Julie Eskew Daniel ’64



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