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CHAPTER 7

Cabrillo Bridge

SAN DIEGO

Dirt hiking trails go beneath the underbelly of the Cabrillo Bridge, where there is reported residual and intelligent paranormal activity.

The sumptuous proportions, the proud dignity of the bridge, encourage great expectations, and one is not disappointed. While admiration is aroused for the engineering skill that made this bridge possible, the thought persists that the real architect of this colossal concrete viaduct was a much higher power than the official engineer.

—Eugen Neuhaus, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley and San Francisco Art Institute, from the book The San Diego Garden Fair, 1916

IF YOU LIVE IN SAN DIEGO you’re no doubt familiar with the Cabrillo Bridge that extends from Balboa Park and serves as an overpass to the major freeway. Visible from Highway 163, the majestic high arches were stunning feats of civil engineering for California in 1915. I couldn’t imagine the route to Balboa Park without it. One of San Diego’s few iconic structures, the bridge has survived earthquakes, fires, reconstruction, and even the increased weight of constant traffic; the bridge was originally built for pedestrians.

The engineers could not have foreseen the auto traffic that would crowd the bridge, nor could they have envisioned the suicides that would take place there with leapers’ bodies hitting oncoming traffic below. The bridge’s safety railings were not installed until 1950, and even today they don’t cover the entire span. Determined jumpers who want the San Diego city skyline as their last view still jump from the bridge—or at least hold up traffic for several hours until they are coaxed down.

Although you’d never guess by looking at the bridge, it seems to have been a magnet for bad energy over the years. Some places are like this—the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance. People on the ledge about suicide seem to tempt fate by going to places with easy access to a big drop that will end their excruciating dilemma, although survivors of Golden Gate suicide attempts all say they regretted the action the moment their hands let loose of the rail. There are only two people who survived a jump from the Cabrillo Bridge. One survivor landed in the man-made lagoon below (before Highway 163 was built under it), and the other became a paraplegic. In 1935, after hearing there had been survivors, one man who didn’t want to take chances on surviving actually hung himself from the bridge.

Built at a cost of $225,154, the bridge is 1,505 feet long and roughly 120 feet high and was constructed in anticipation of the Panama-California Exposition, a two-year event that took place when San Diego’s population was only 36,000. The bridge is the main access across Cabrillo Canyon, land formerly known as Pound Canyon, where horses and cows grazed in the late 1800s. The Laguna de Puente, a lagoon that once pooled underneath the bridge, was created by city workers and supported wildlife, including deer (I’ve lived here for eight years and have not seen a single one within the county) and small animals. It wasn’t long before the Department of Health drained the lagoon because of the incredible amount of mosquito larvae found there.

Entering Balboa Park from the west on the bridge, visitors are greeted by giant century plants and San Diego’s coat of arms mounted on the crown archway entering the inner park. The archway is designed with reliefs of Doric-order architecture and icons of the Atlantic and Pacific, which represent the joining of the two oceans by the Panama Canal. Everything you see at Balboa Park today was saved due to the philanthropic hearts (and deep pockets) of San Diegans who invested heavily in restoration. The world-class San Diego Zoo was created by one of those mitzvahs—a dentist heard the abandoned animals roaring for food (their keepers had just left them locked up when the exposition ended) and designed a plan to create the zoo. Big-name help also came to the aid of the park. Before Balboa Park was built, this area was home to the Tipai-Kumeyaay tribe. The Kumeyaay tribe now owns the US Grant Hotel—Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., the president’s son, was on the board that commissioned Balboa Park for the exposition. Indeed, things do come full circle.

Cabrillo Bridge is a beautiful site in the daytime, but night is when things from the other side of the veil are noticed more frequently, only because most of the tourists have left and traffic has slowed. I believe paranormal activity can be seen all the time, as I often catch evidence during the day. I suggest visiting this location, at least for the first time, during the day. I won’t hide the fact that this bridge has seen more than fifty suicides in her time, a few tragic murders, and even an airplane crash. This is a dodgy place to hang out after the sun goes down, so think personal safety when you’re there and be aware of your surroundings.

In my paranormal investigations, I’ve found if there’s any Native American residual energy, it’s usually peaceful. It’s not only the spirits of jumpers we were looking for during my team’s investigations. People are murdered in and around Balboa, and accidents occur. In addition to several workers killed during construction of the park, “Sky Dragon” Joe Bocquel died in the crash of his pusher biplane beside the Cabrillo Bridge on November 4, 1916, while performing at the Exposition. Fatal car, pedestrian, and bike accidents are common on nearby Sixth Avenue and on Highway 163. So, is this bridge/park a beacon for negative energy? Did something occur on this land so long ago that it caused the area to forever be a portal for unnatural deaths? I do get a sense of dread just walking across the bridge, and walking under it is one of the most depressing feelings I’ve ever had.

In May 1994, a young actor from The Old Globe Theatre was killed in a random drive-by shooting as he walked across the bridge with his girlfriend. In the 1930s, a young woman was stabbed nine times by a culprit believed to be the Coast Fiend Serial Killer in the nearby Balboa Park parking lot, close to one of the investigation sites we set up.

On September 14, 1984, two San Diego police officers, including the first woman in the department to die in the line of duty, went into “end of watch” status—a phrase emergency workers use to describe death on the job—where far too many of our police officers go.

The officers removed two girls, aged fifteen and sixteen, from the company of two men in their mid-twenties. The men were drunk, and a later investigation showed that they had also asked the girls to take methamphetamine that they provided. Making sure the girls were safe in their unit car before they went any further, the officers went about checking the men out and were in the process of writing misdemeanor tickets when the older of the two men, Joselito Cinco, wanted for several outstanding warrants, shot and killed the officers at point-blank range. Cinco tried to take the teens from the car, but they ran to the safety of an overturned picnic bench where an older couple was hiding. The second suspect, who was unarmed, became frightened and tried joining the group hiding under the bench, but was turned away by the couple. Police backup arrived and the officers apprehended the men. Cinco was held without bond and charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, making him eligible for the death penalty. He was convicted and sentenced to death but decided to commit suicide before justice could be served.

The last view for many is the San Diego downtown skyline and oncoming traffic on Highway 163. The guard railing on this bridge (visible on the right) ends before it spans the entire length of the bridge. Many have campaigned to have it extended. The Cabrillo Bridge has seen too much tragedy.

A 1986 cold-case murder (which happened not too far away from our investigation site), was recently solved in 2007 when four men were arrested for the rape and murder of a thirty-seven-year-old woman. The incident occurred when a woman and two male friends were approached by seven men who attacked, robbed, and tied them up. The men dragged the woman off to a canyon south of the golf course, where they raped and killed her. The women’s two friends survived. In 2007, the murderer was tracked via DNA that finally matched one of the men when he was put into the system for a crime. The men were arrested and charged for their crimes. The crime rate inside the park is infamous and was even highlighted in the opening scene of T. Jefferson Parker’s novel The Fallen, in which a San Diego Ethics Commission director is found murdered in his SUV on a dirt road near the bridge.

“I didn’t know anything at all about the Cabrillo Bridge in San Diego when I set out to write The Fallen in 2005,” says T. Jefferson Parker. “All I knew is that it was stately and elegant, and it was built as part of Balboa Park for the [Panama-California] Exposition in 1915, and that I’d drive under it every time I went to the airport. I read in the San Diego Union-Tribune that a homeless man had been found living within the bridge and of course evicted. I didn’t know about its haunted, bloody past at all. It’s a beauty, and I love it even more now that I know about its shady, spooky history. Maybe it was just a gut-level instinct that made me set that murder under the Cabrillo Bridge.”

Balboa Park is visited by thirteen million visitors a year and is patrolled in the day by San Diego Police—unfortunately, its loyal horse patrol was auctioned off to the highest bidder and replaced by ATVs. In the daytime, you rarely have the chance to be alone, as many buildings house more than a dozen museums, and others are the headquarters for organizations such as the San Diego History Center, where you can find more background on just about all the San Diego locations listed in this book.