Structure and Location
Fort Guijarros was made out of adobe and it had ten cannons mounted in gun emplacements. At least two of the guns survive. One of them, "El Jupiter", can be seen at Fort Stockton. "El Capitan" is located in Old Town Plaza in San Diego.
The fort was built in 1797 as the first defensive fortifications for San Diego harbor. It commanded the entrance to San Diego Bay from a rise at the base of Ballast Point at Point Loma. In 1796 the Spanish named the point "Punta de los Guijarros", which means "point of the cobblestones". The fort's English name is "Fort Cobblestones". The point derived the name Ballast Point from the fact that the early Yankee skippers would have stones gathered from Ballast Point to serve as ballast in their ships during their returns around Cape Horn to their home town, Boston.
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