San Deigo Historic Site 55 FORT ROSECRANS NATIONAL CEMETERY

This cemetery, lying well out on the highway to the old lighthouse, was set aside as a burial place for the San Diego Barracks in the late 1870's, anddesignated Cemetery of San Diego Barracks (Point Loma). Upon establishment of Fort Rosecrans in 1898, the name was changed to Fort Rosecrans Post Cemetery,and so remained until 1935, when it was reclassified as Fort Rosecrans NationalCemetery.

The granite obelisk standing in the older part of the grounds is a memorialto sixty men who were killed by a boiler explosion aboard the USS Bennington,a gunboat, on July 21, 1905, in San Diego Harbor. Most of the dead are buried here, as are veterans and victims of both World Wars, and all other majorAmerican conflicts back to the Mexican War, including the officers and menwho fell at San Pasqual.

On this point white men first set foot on the California coast, in 1542, when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo discovered San Diego Bay, which he called San Miguel.

In 1602 Sebastian Vizcaino landed here, and gave the port the name San Diego.Priests from his ships set up a temporary chapel on Ballast Point and conductedthe first Catholic services on record in California.

In the autumn of 1769 the earliest beacon on the entire coastline is said tohave been lighted here. just a lantern on a pole, it was intended as a guide for the ships from San Blas that kept the new colony supplied with the necessities of life. The lighthouse now standing on Ballast Point dates from1890.

The point derives its name from the fact that the hide ships and othersvisiting California sometimes loaded shingle from the beach as stiffening before cargo was taken aboard. Some of the squares and streets of Boston are supposedly paved with these cobbles. The Spanish called it La Punta deGuijarros, "Cobblestone Point."

Ballast Point lies well within the Fort Rosecrans military reservation, on the lower road, which starts at the gate where Rosecrans Street ends.