The Lily Pond, Mission Cliff Gardens, San Diego, CA, 1923

About this postcard

The view looks across a still lily pond dotted with white and pink blooms, their pads floating on the reflective water. Tall palms and dense shrubbery frame the pond, and at the left a low, tile-roofed garden building sits among beds of red and yellow flowers. Mission Cliff Gardens was a privately developed pleasure garden on the bluffs above Mission Valley in San Diego, laid out in the early 20th century and reached by streetcar. Its palms, ponds, and valley views made it a popular outing in the 1910s and 1920s; the garden later declined and was subdivided, leaving postcards like this one as a record of its appearance.