Cabrillo National Monument

Perched 422 feet up at the tip of Point Loma, the monument marks where Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo came ashore in 1542, the first European landing on what's now the West Coast. A restored 1855 lighthouse guided ships into San Diego Bay for nearly forty years before decommissioning, and the overlook just south of it was the site of the world's first public whale-watching post, set up in 1950 to track the gray whales that still migrate past each January and February. Below the bluffs, low tide exposes some of the coast's better tide pools, home to sea stars, anemones, and hermit crabs, reached along the Bayside and Coastal trails.