Point Loma / Shelter Island, CA — A Navy Peninsula With an Engineered Island Attached

What Actually Makes Point Loma and Shelter Island Different

Start with the geography, because it explains almost everything else about this market. Point Loma is a narrow peninsula of high sandstone bluffs and mesa-top neighborhoods forming the western edge of San Diego Bay, with the open Pacific crashing against Sunset Cliffs on the west side and calm, protected bay water on the east side. That bay side is where Shelter Island sits -- and Shelter Island is not, historically, an island at all. It began as a low sandbar or mudbank off the Point Loma shore, visible mainly at low tide and built up over decades from soil the San Diego River had deposited; harbor-improvement dredging beginning in the 1930s added to it, and during World War II the Navy's need to accommodate larger ships meant dredging San Diego Bay itself, with the spoil piled onto the shoal until it stood more than 20 feet above high tide. A causeway connected the built-up land to Point Loma in 1950, and in the early 1950s the city and harbor district dredged a yacht basin and deepwater channel and developed the peninsula into a marina district -- under a zoning rule at the time requiring buildings there to carry a Polynesian architectural theme. What's on Shelter Island today -- marina row, hotels, restaurants, a public waterfront park -- sits on land that is, quite literally, San Diego Bay's own dredged bottom, raised into a peninsula on purpose.

The other defining fact is the military. President Millard Fillmore reserved the high ground at the tip of Point Loma for military use back in 1852, and the Army built Fort Rosecrans there after the Civil War, named for Union general William Starke Rosecrans. Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, established in 1882 on 82 ridgetop acres overlooking both the bay and the ocean, now holds more than 120,000 interments, including 22 Medal of Honor recipients. The Navy took over the fort's grounds in 1959; a Submarine Support Facility went operational in 1963, the base was redesignated Naval Submarine Base San Diego in 1981, and a 1990s-era Base Realignment and Closure reorganization created today's Naval Base Point Loma in 1998 -- an active submarine-support and tactical-training installation, not a museum piece. A separate Navy property, the old Naval Training Center on the peninsula's bay side, closed in 1997 under that same BRAC process; the city adopted its own NTC Reuse Plan in 1998, and the 361-acre site is now Liberty Station, a mixed-use district that kept its historic Spanish Colonial Revival buildings and cruciform street layout while adding the Liberty Public Market, dozens of restaurants, housing, offices, and a hotel district. Liberty Station also carries something worth knowing before buying there specifically: it sits inside its own Mello-Roos Community Facilities District (CFD No. 3, administered by the City of San Diego), a special tax layered on top of the standard 1% property-tax base that most of the rest of the older Point Loma peninsula does not carry.

Before any of that federal history, Point Loma had a working-waterfront identity built by Portuguese and Italian immigrant fishing families who settled here starting in the early 1900s, drawn by San Diego's growing tuna-canning industry. At the industry's peak, San Diego's tuna fleet numbered around 200 vessels and accounted for roughly 80% of the world's tuna catch, with something like 160 of those boats Portuguese-owned; Point Loma became known locally as "Tunaville" and was the heart of the city's Portuguese-American community. The industry collapsed through the mid-1980s as canneries closed and foreign competition and tighter environmental rules changed the economics, but the Portuguese Historical Center, founded in 1977 on Avenida de Portugal, still preserves that heritage today. A different institutional history sits on the peninsula's western ridge: the campus now occupied by Point Loma Nazarene University was originally "Lomaland," a Theosophical Society commune run by Katherine Tingley around 1900, before the Nazarene denomination's Pacific Bible College relocated there from Los Angeles in 1973 and the school eventually took its current name in 1998.

Residentially, "Point Loma" isn't one neighborhood but several genuinely distinct ones packed onto one peninsula. Roseville-Fleetridge, named for San Diego pioneer developer Louis Rose, is the oldest settled part of the peninsula. La Playa runs along the bay shoreline near the marinas and yacht clubs. The Wooded Area sits on the hilltop ridge between La Playa and Sunset Cliffs and generally carries the peninsula's highest prices and most panoramic views. Sunset Cliffs itself is the bluff-top strip along the ocean, where streets dead-end at the cliff edge and the coastal-erosion risk covered above is most directly relevant. Loma Portal, Point Loma Heights, and Point Loma Highlands sit more centrally, closer to the Rosecrans/Midway commercial corridor, and Liberty Station occupies the former Naval Training Center site. A buyer comparing listings across these pockets is comparing genuinely different products -- bay-view vs. ocean-bluff vs. inland-mesa, historic vs. redeveloped-military, Mello-Roos vs. not -- inside what outside descriptions often flatten into one "Point Loma" label.

As of 2026, two live, current stories sit on top of that history and should shape how anyone researches a purchase here. First, the erosion and seawall fight covered in the Tide Bar above -- a genuinely unresolved conflict between the city's desire to protect Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and Sunset Cliffs Natural Park's own rules against building seawalls inside it. Second, San Diego's short-term-rental licensing system: the city's Tier 4 whole-home STR license cap, set at 1% of citywide housing stock, was fully reached and its waitlist closed as of March 2026, meaning a buyer today generally cannot obtain a brand-new whole-home STR license anywhere in the city, Point Loma included -- see the investment-outlook page for what that means for anyone underwriting a purchase on assumed rental income.

Dining, History, and Things to Do

Liberty Station's Liberty Public Market anchors the peninsula's biggest food destination -- a food-hall-style market inside the former Naval Training Center's historic mess hall building, surrounded by dozens more restaurants, breweries, and shops spread across the 361-acre redevelopment's arts, retail, and promenade districts. Down on Shelter Island, the marina-row restaurant scene runs from casual seafood shacks to sit-down waterfront dining with direct views of the yacht harbor and downtown San Diego's skyline across the bay, alongside the hotels and the San Diego Yacht Club that anchor the peninsula's boating identity. For a taste of the older, working-waterfront Point Loma, the Portuguese Historical Center on Avenida de Portugal preserves the history of the Azorean, Madeiran, and mainland Portuguese families who built San Diego's tuna-clipper fleet, a short drive from where those canneries once stood.

Cabrillo National Monument, at the peninsula's southern tip, is the headline attraction and a genuine National Park Service unit -- the Old Point Loma Lighthouse (which guided ships from 1855 until it was decommissioned in 1891 because its high perch was too often obscured by low coastal fog), tide pools along the rocky shore, and, in winter and early spring, a well-known whale-watching overlook for the Pacific gray whale migration. Sunset Cliffs Natural Park, running along the peninsula's western bluffs, is exactly what its name promises -- one of San Diego's most-photographed sunset spots, alongside surf breaks below the cliffs that draw a dedicated local crowd. Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, on the same ridge, is both a working national cemetery and a place with sweeping views over the bay and ocean simultaneously. Point Loma Nazarene University's cliffside campus, on the site of the old Lomaland Theosophical commune, adds a small-college presence with its own historic buildings, including the 1901 Mieras Hall, open to public visitors along parts of its grounds.