From left: William Kettner; the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz; Navy nurses at the Prado in Balboa Park, circa 1944. Many of the park’s museums and other spaces were taken over to provide care for wounded soldiers.

One hundred years ago, thousands of San Diegans eagerly awaited the U.S. Navy armada as it approached the entrance to San Diego Bay. Black smoke billowed from the battleships, drifting northeast across Coronado. In a few hours, thousands of officers and enlisted men would be welcomed ashore with grand parties.

Next month San Diego will celebrate a rarely recognized yet critical milestone in this city’s development: the day the U.S. Navy “discovered” San Diego.

President Teddy Roosevelt was well into his second term when he ordered an armada of 16 battleships, called the Great White Fleet, on an around-the-world cruise at a time when international tensions in the Far East were intensifying. A diplomatic show of American power and purpose was deemed critical in those uncertain days.

When the fleet arrived off Baja California for gunnery exercises and to refuel, farsighted San Diegans saw an opportunity for a community that was losing the battle for commercial supremacy on the West Coast. At the turn of the century, Los Angeles was developing a modern harbor and port infrastructure. Oil had been discovered a few miles inland only a decade after a major railroad system connected the booming city to the rest of the country.

San Diego, meanwhile, had been bypassed by the new rail system and was saddled with a marshy bay that needed dredging if it had any hope of developing a port. Federal funding was critical to that. Maybe the impetus for that could come from the Navy, San Diego leaders speculated.

San Diego mobilized. Business leader John Spreckels and a host of Chamber of Commerce officials steamed south to meet the Navy at Magdalena Bay. They met with Admiral Robley Evans with such robust enthusiasm that he agreed to a four-day visit to San Diego on his way to San Francisco.

That single decision changed the course of San Diego’s future.

As the armada’s four columns of battleships off Tijuana approached San Diego on April 14, 1908, officers and enlisted men stood stunned by the sight on shore. Thousands of San Diegans lined the beach. Swarms of small boats at the entrance to San Diego Bay, many sporting red, white and blue bunting, were filled with San Diegans shouting a robust welcome.

At 1 p.m. the USS Connecticut dropped anchor. The others followed suit and soon were met by welcoming skiffs and boats coming alongside. San Diego citrus growers donated more than 30,000 oranges which were presented to the armada’s crews shortly after they arrived.

On shore near the Hotel del Coronado, 20,000 San Diegans cheered. They recognized this could be San Diego’s only opportunity to capture the attention and imagination of the U.S. Navy. The welcoming reception was only the start.

The city’s organizing committee, chaired by future congressman William Kettner, had organized transport service that ferried 16,000 officers and enlisted men ashore for the first of four days’ worth of dances, parties, high teas and galas. After sunset, the armada conducted a special electric light and searchlight display which became one of the most remarkable sights ever witnessed off San Diego. The next day, more than 60 companies of U.S. Navy officers and enlisted men arrived at the Broadway Pier for a parade the length of Downtown ending in Balboa Park. More than 75,000 San Diegans lined both sides of the street. Gov. James Gillett extended an official California welcome.

San Diego’s enthusiastic campaign captured the nation’s attention. Reporters filed stories across the country, extolling the potential of San Diego as a commercial port and a U.S. Navy homeport. Government officials and Navy officers cabled the Navy Department praising San Diego.

On April 18, 1908, the Great White Fleet weighed anchor to head north toward Los Angeles. Once again thousands of San Diegans lined the shore for a final salute.

The gamble by the Chamber of Commerce had paid off. “It was only when the great American armada reached this port…that the people of this country awoke to the fact that San Diego was on the map,” reflected The San Diego Union, long after the Great White Fleet had completed its global mission.

San Diego never would be the same.

Three years after the fleet’s visit, Jan. 28, 1911, Glenn Curtiss proved the viability of naval aviation when he landed a biplane on San Diego Bay before it was craned aboard the cruiser USS Pennsylvania. The “aeroplane” now had a future in the Navy. Also in 1911 Curtiss established the first military aviator training school where NAS North Island now is located. The first naval aviator, Lt. Theodore Ellyson, earned his gold wings there in 1911.

Naval aviation soon took off in the skies over Downtown and San Diego Bay. By the end of World War I, North Island had trained more than 200 aviators and nearly 900 mechanics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, San Diego Bay was transformed into a massive Navy homeport as both Navy and Army aviators trained at Rockwell Field on North Island. In short order, parachute jumping from a plane, mid-air refueling, aerial photography, and ground-to-air use of radios were pioneered over San Diego.

Too, America’s fledgling aircraft carrier force found a home in San Diego. The Navy’s first four carriers, the USS Langley, USS Lexington, USS Saratoga, and USS Ranger all were homeported in San Diego by 1935.

Naval aviation also captured the imagination of America. Hollywood movie producers often came to San Diego to film flying movies. Theatergoers across the country marveled at adventures in the sky captured by “Flying Fleet,” “The Flying Marine,” and “Hell Divers,” all shot in San Diego.

Yet for all the growing notoriety, and the groundwork laid in 1908, San Diego truly became a Navy town during World War II. Shortly after war was declared, more than 100,000 civilian workers and Navy personnel arrived at what had become an increasingly strategic homeport and military manufacturing center.

Six naval air stations sprang up around San Diego. One of them, NAS Miramar (and its Top Gun school), became a national icon. Hundreds of thousands of sailors, aviators and Marines arrived in San Diego, many through the Naval Training Center. Most embarked for the war on troop ships moored alongside Broadway and Navy Piers.

Thousands returned horribly wounded, on their way to the Navy’s expanded Balboa Medical Center. It soon was so overwhelmed with patients that museums in Balboa Park were commandeered as extended hospital wings. Ultimately 10,000 hospital beds were created for the 172,000 patients in San Diego treated during World War II.

By the end of World War II, San Diego’s population had doubled. An entire generation of sailors and Marines had discovered San Diego, many of whom would make the city their permanent home.

In subsequent decades, San Diego and the Navy reflected world affairs. As the Cold War raged, hundreds of Navy ships were assigned here. As warfare technology advanced, so did Navy facilities around the bay that spanned submarine warfare, communications, nuclear weapons, helicopters, and Special Forces.

By the close of the 20th century, San Diego had become a military technology center. Intercontinental missile construction had been replaced by SPAWAR’s naval command and control technology development and its more than 7,000 employees and near $5 billion budget.

Today, San Diego’s partnership with the U.S. Navy remains one of the city’s most recognizably defining characteristics. The military spends nearly $13 billion annually, accounting for about 18 percent of the gross regional product. San Diego is home to more active-duty military personnel than any city in the United States.

Nearly 100 years after the Navy’s unexpected discovery of San Diego, naval aviation tourism has become part of the Downtown waterscape. The USS Midway Museum opened in 2004 and more than 3 million visitors later has become the most-visited floating ship museum in the country. More than 280 private events are held aboard, with reservations being placed up to three years in advance. Its youth overnight programs and expanding education curriculum are especially popular. On April 14, the museum will unveil a new bow exhibit showcasing the partnership of the U.S. Navy and the community in San Diego Bay.

From the lumbering battleships of 1908 to the stealthy sleek ships and aircraft of today, San Diego has been at the center of a remarkable transformation, one that promises to continue to define the city for decades to come.

Scott McGaugh is the marketing director of the USS Midway Museum and has been associated with the project since 1996. He is the author of Midway Magic and Midway Memories, both in their third edition. (midwaymagic.com) Today, he is working on a USS Midway-based history book for high school students.