San Diego Air and Space Museum

The museum's collection dates back to an incorporation in 1961 and a first opening in 1963, but a 1978 fire destroyed its original home and more than 50 aircraft along with it. Community fundraising allowed the museum to reopen in 1980 inside the Ford Building, built for the 1935-1936 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Exhibits trace the history of flight from early gliders through the Apollo program, and notable holdings include a flown Apollo 9 command module and a replica of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, built with San Diego financing and largely San Diego labor in 1927. The museum also maintains the International Aerospace Hall of Fame, honoring pioneers of flight, and has been a Smithsonian Affiliate since 2005.

San Diego's connection to aviation runs deeper than this one museum, since the city helped fund and build the original Spirit of St. Louis, and walking through galleries that trace that history can give a newly arrived family a concrete sense of why aerospace still matters to the region's identity and economy.