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Coronado Beach California | Home | Best Beaches Just over the bridge from San Diego is a small, tree-lined beach haven known as Coronado. The "island," as many locals call it, is really a peninsula connected to the mainland by a neck of land named the Silver Strand. Coronado is about a mile from downtown San Diego and is linked to the city by the Coronado-San Diego Bridge. Crown City, as it is called (Coronado means "crowned one" in Spanish), regards itself as a friendly, small town of wide leafy streets lined with Victorian homes and Californian bungalows ... and regards San Diego as somewhere else.  Along with the amicable, small-town atmosphere and near-perfect weather, Coronado proudly touts itself as a car-optional environment. The island is small enough to walk almost anywhere — it's only a mile from the San Diego Bay side of the peninsula to the ocean — and the Coronado 904 Shuttle (fare is $1) loops past most of the hot spots. There are also 15 miles (24 kilometers) of relatively flat paths fit for both cyclists and skaters and even more miles of bike routes along city streets. If you'd rather zip around the strip in a car, The Coronado Island Visitors Bureau can tell you where to rent some wheels. The emblem of Coronado is the Hotel Del Coronado — a Victorian pleasure dome that instantly turned Coronado into a beach resort when it opened on the oceanfront in 1888. Other resorts followed, but today the military, not tourism, represents Coronado's largest industry. The North Island Naval Air Station, site of America's first military flying school, occupies the entire north half of Coronado, and Navy SEALs train at the Naval Amphibious Base on the south end of town. For well over a century, Coronado's beaches have been its fortune. The main beach, Coronado Central Beach, stretches 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) behind the great houses along Ocean Boulevard. The morning crowd here includes the SEALs who run along the beach and later in the day swimmers, bodysurfers, boogie boarders, sand sculptors, tide poolers and — from December through February — whale watchers all take to the sand and sea. North Beach attracts surfers in the morning, and at the extreme north is Dog Beach where leashless canines can frolic in the surf. Other beaches include Silver Strand State Beach along the road connecting Coronado to the mainland, where fire rings are provided and overnight RV camping is welcome. Coronado also offers less-crowded beaches. Glorietta Bay Beach is a grassy park and playground with a small sandy beach, and there is a vest-pocket patch of sand beside the wooden pier at the Ferry Landing Marketplace that's a good bet for a barren beach. Coronado Beach California | Hermosa Beach California | Island of St. John | Moshup Beach Martha's Vineyard | Myrtle Beach South Carolina |
