Inside San Diego’s early canneries: How fish transformed the waterfront

Part one of a series on the canneries of San Diego.

San Diego’s waterfront once revolved around a very different kind of visitor.

Fishing boats arrived carrying tons of fish. Workers rushed the catch into nearby plants, where it was cleaned, processed, and packed into cans. The finished products were then shipped to markets across the country.

The canneries helped transform the city’s waterfront during the first decades of the 20th century, turning commercial fishing into a major local industry and creating a network of factories, docks and businesses along San Diego Bay.

It began on a relatively small scale.

In 1909, Alex J. Steele and Edward Hume built a cannery at La Playa devoted to sardines. The first fish were canned there in October of that year, establishing what would become San Diego’s commercial fish-canning industry.

Tuna soon changed the business.

The Pacific Tuna Canning Co. began operating at the foot of F Street in 1911. The plant could produce thousands of one-pound cans a day, according to historical accounts, with its products shipped to Eastern markets.

The operation demonstrated the potential of turning San Diego’s abundant fish supply into a product that could travel far beyond the local market.

But the F Street plant did not last.

A fire destroyed the Pacific Tuna Canning Co. facility in 1912. The company rebuilt and opened a replacement plant at the foot of 26th Street in 1913, part of the growing concentration of fish-processing businesses along the bay.

The industry continued expanding.

By 1919, San Diego had 10 canneries employing about 1,500 people, with additional workers hired during peak seasons. The plants were supplied by approximately 150 boats, while more than 600 fishermen were engaged in deep-sea and fresh-market fishing.

Albacore had become the principal fish being canned, while sardines remained important.

The location of the canneries was significant. Many clustered along the waterfront and reclaimed tidelands, putting fishing boats, processing facilities, warehouses, and transportation close together. The area that would become Barrio Logan was an important part of that industrial landscape.

A city of San Diego historical survey documents fish canneries and wharves along the bayfront, including several fishing businesses operating there by 1921.

The canneries also connected San Diego to markets well beyond Southern California. Fish that once might have been sold locally could now be preserved and shipped, helping turn the waterfront into an industrial center.

The growth of the canneries also helped shape the communities surrounding the industry. Japanese, Italian and Portuguese immigrants became important participants in San Diego’s fishing economy, while families established themselves near the waterfront and in neighborhoods connected to the trade.

But the physical transformation came first: boats, docks, canneries, warehouses, and shipping operations began changing the shoreline.

What started with a small sardine cannery at La Playa in 1909 had become, within a decade, a substantial industry employing thousands and supplied by a sizable fishing fleet.

San Diego’s waterfront was no longer just a place where fish arrived.

It had become a place where fish became an industry.

And the canneries were about to become an even bigger part of San Diego’s story.

Sources:

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• San Diego History Center, “Gold in the Sun, 1900–1919, Chapter 12: The Military Appreciated What The Natives Did Not.”
• City of San Diego, Barrio Logan Historical Resources Survey.
• City of San Diego, “Historic Contexts and Surveys.”