Sitting at 422 feet above Point Loma's southern tip, Cabrillo National Monument spans 160 acres commemorating Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo's September 28, 1542 landing — the first European expedition to set foot on what became the West Coast — under NPS management since 1933. Exhibits, films, and ranger-led programs operate through the adjacent Cabrillo National Monument Visitor Center, while the Old Point Loma Lighthouse (first lit November 15, 1855 and decommissioned in 1891 because fog obscured its beam) marks the highest elevation in the park. President Woodrow Wilson established the original half-acre monument on October 14, 1913, with the site expanding to its current footprint through additions in the 1950s and 1960s as the Army transferred former Fort Rosecrans coastal-defense land to NPS. National Register of Historic Places status since October 15, 1966 plus California Historical Landmark #56 designation cover grounds that include the Bayside Trail, the April 2024 Oceanside Trail, rocky intertidal tidepools drawing an estimated 215,000 annual visitors, and Gray Whale migration viewing December through March — shoreline whale viewpoints that complement the charter-boat whale-watching departing from peninsula landings including AF Sportfishing. Multi-resource preservation management covering WWII coastal-defense bunkers, the 1854 lighthouse, the rocky intertidal ecosystem, the Portuguese-sculpted Cabrillo statue replica, and over a million annual visitors represents the monument's most institutionally complex ongoing workstream.