Oral History Program

The San Diego Historical Society Research Archives houses San Diego County’s largest and oldest assemblage of oral history interviews. It is comprised of nearly eleven hundred interviews with San Diegans and documents one hundred and fifty years of memories.

The Oral History Program traces its beginnings to 1956, when Edgar Hastings, a former County Supervisor, began interviewing some of San Diego's oldest residents, including several born as early as the 1850s and 60s. By the time of his death in 1961 he had completed over three hundred interviews.

After a quiet period in the early 1960s, Serra Museum Librarian Sylvia Arden brought the Program back in 1967. Since then the Program has been continuously active and has completed nearly eight hundred interviews. The collection covers a tremendous range of experiences and subjects relating to San Diego's past. All the interviews have been transcribed, indexed, cataloged and preserved and are available to researchers in either text, audio, or audio-visual formats in the Research Archives.

The Contributions of volunteers from the community have been essential to the Program’s success. Some notable volunteers include Robert Wright, who has completed nearly two hundred interviews since the early seventies, and Betty Stevens and Lou Hassan, who have collectively transcribed over one hundred interviews.

Major Subject Categories and Themes of the Collection

African Americans       Mexican Americans
Agriculture             Military and Bases
Architects              Mining
Artists                 Mission Valley
The Border              Music and Musicians
Californios             Native Americans
Cattle Industry         Natural Disasters
Chinese Americans       Neighborhoods
Crime and Corruption    Old Town
Dairies                 Politicians and Politics
Defense Industries      Railroads
Developers              Religious Sects
Doctors and Medicine    Sports
Expositions             Surfing
German Americans        Tijuana
The Harbor              Tourism
Japanese Americans      Tuna Industry
Law Enforcement         Water
Labor Movements         World War II (in digital video)
Maritime                The San Diego Zoo

Jane Kenealy, Archivist
(619) 232-6203 ext. 117