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SOHO's 2026 Most Endangered List
Since 1992, SOHO’s Most Endangered List has been one of our most effective tools for raising awareness and spurring action to protect San Diego County’s irreplaceable historic and cultural resources.
This year’s list demonstrates just how broad our preservation mission is and the remarkable depth of San Diego County’s heritage.
The 2026 Most Endangered List includes historic buildings; a civic landmark; multiple cultural landscapes, including three parks and a sacred binational landscape; and two historic performance venues. They range from the 1894 Red Rest and Red Roost cottages in La Jolla and the 1912 Spreckels Theatre downtown to the vast, unspoiled backcountry threatened by the proposed Powerlink and the sacred Kuchamaa Mountain on the U.S.-Mexico border. Once a downtown centerpiece, Horton Plaza Fountain, which SOHO has already saved three times, is again nonfunctional and deteriorating.
Being named to SOHO’s Most Endangered List can help prevent or discourage the demolition and inappropriate development of historic buildings and places, while encouraging rehabilitation, restoration, and adaptive reuse. SOHO’s spotlight can also bring much-needed attention and funding to threatened resources. In fact, the adobe Warner–Carrillo Ranch House, built in 1857, received several transformative grants after being named to the 2000 Most Endangered List.
Every year, historic properties and cultural resources across San Diego County face threats ranging from demolition to deterioration and neglect. These places, whether in our cities, small communities, rural areas, or backcountry, contribute to the quality of life and character of our region. They also help tell the story of who we are and where we came from.
The Most Endangered List is not simply a catalog of places in trouble. It is a call to action. Each property or landscape represents something larger: a life, a neighborhood, a business, a family, a community, or a chapter in San Diego’s history. When these places disappear, we lose more than buildings and landscapes. We lose tangible connections to the people and events that shaped our region.
Together, our historic and cultural resources create a distinct San Diego portrait. Any loss leaves irreplaceable gaps in that story.
This year’s list highlights eight historic and cultural landmarks facing significant threats.
Red Roost and Red Rest Bungalows,
La Jolla Cove |
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For more than 25 years, SOHO has placed the Red Rest and Red Roost cottages on its Most Endangered List. Few historic places in San Diego better illustrate the consequences of prolonged neglect and inadequate enforcement of historic preservation... Read more |
Presidio Park, Old Town San Diego |
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Presidio Park, one of the most significant historic, cultural, and archaeological landscapes in the United States, is once again under serious threat, this time from a proposed infrastructure project tied to accessibility improvements at the Junípero... Read more |
Horton Plaza Park and the Broadway Fountain |
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Designed by renowned San Diego architect Irving J. Gill and completed in 1910, Horton Plaza is one of San Diego’s oldest civic landmarks. Its fountain, with a distinctive glass-and-bronze dome and inscription, “Broadway Fountain for the People,” has stood at the center of the... Read more |
Spreckels Theatre, Downtown |
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In 2008, longtime San Diego Union-Tribune theater critic Welton Jones described the Spreckels Theatre as “San Diego’s premiere show business treasure” and one of the most beautiful and historic theaters in the country. ... Read more |
Granger Music Hall, National City |
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Granger Music Hall is one of the rarest surviving works of San Diego's pioneering architect Irving J. Gill and one of the region's most laudable historic music spaces. Built in 1898 for Colorado silver magnate Ralph Granger at his National City estate, the hall housed his... Read more |
Backcountry San Diego and
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park |
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For generations, this vast desert landscape has been a setting for Native American history, early exploration and migration, ranching, transportation, and settlement. Its significance is not confined to individual buildings or archaeological sites. The roads, trails, mountains,... Read more |
Kuchamaa Mountain (Tecate Peak)
Binational Cultural Landscape |
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Kuchamaa Mountain, known in the United States as Tecate Peak, is a sacred, living cultural landscape whose spiritual, cultural, and environmental significance predates the creation of both the United States and Mexico. ... Read more |
Congregational Church of La Jolla |
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For more than 135 years, the Congregational Church of La Jolla has been part of the story of this community, but the landmark is now genuinely at risk. Completed in 1916, the church was designed by Carleton M. Winslow, an architect who played a major role in... Read more |
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