Chula Vista Heritage Museum on F Street in the Third Avenue Village preserves the city's arc from its 1880s founding as a gentleman-farming community through its wartime transformation under Rohr Aircraft. Permanent exhibits feature photographs, artifacts, and oral histories curated in partnership with educational institutions including Southwestern College, which supports archival research for the museum's rotating displays. A branch of the Chula Vista Public Library funded by the Friends of the Heritage Museum, the institution traces its origins to the Chula Vista Historical Society founded in 1981. Exhibits chronicle Rohr Aircraft's wartime manufacturing impact, the city's incorporation in 1911, and Chula Vista's growth from a small agricultural settlement to the second-largest city in San Diego County. Public art and metalwork installations by area sculptors such as El Callejon Art extend the museum's cultural footprint beyond its interior galleries into the Third Avenue streetscape. A Fred Rohr-designed drop hammer displayed at the entrance carries a designation from the Chula Vista Historical Preservation Commission for its role in automating aircraft sheet-metal fabrication during the Second World War.