San Diego Community Identification Signs

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Throughout the city of San Diego, arched signs over roads welcome people into the community. Examples of these signs can be found at https://www.aaroads.com/california/sandiego2.html. The communities that don't have these signs want them. This article describes an effort to place such a sign in the City Heights community of San Diego.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/aug/18/city-heights-wants-place-san-diego-streetscape-tra/

San Diegans love their neighborhood signs. Communities from Carlsbad to Chula Vista don't just have them — they celebrate them.

In 2009, residents shot fireworks off of Hillcrest's sign as they hoisted it above the roadway. The festivities marked the 25th anniversary, not of the sign's first raising, but of its 1984 replacement.

Similar sign celebrations even spurred the first CityFest and Adams Avenue Street Fair.

While most communities opt for a modest concrete or wood sign on the side of the road, San Diego County seems to go big — and elaborate. El Cajon's sign over Main Street, for example, has lighting effects that change with the temperature.

(City Heights) first sign hung in the early 1900s at Boundary Street and University Avenue, where City Heights meets North Park. Light boxes Finkbeiner describes as "Wheel of Fortune letters" spelled out "East San Diego," City Heights' name before being incorporated into the city.

"Sometime during the Prohibition era, I'm guessing — somewhere in the 1920s, 1930s — that sign at Boundary was removed and it was replaced at the corner of University and Fairmount," Finkbeiner said.

That sign hung from 1954 to 1968 until the city removed it to widen the street.

Community members want to put their new sign near that intersection. It would have neon lights, marquee-style light bulbs and cast-concrete posts with designs celebrating the neighborhood's diversity.