What is the San Diego Witches Tower?

[Music] today we're in san diego's presidio park to check out a location that if you look on google maps it's listed as the witches tower we're going to explore that place check out its history and explain why it's really not what it seems and here's one of the el camino real bells not only was presidio park the birthplace of san diego in 1769 but it was also the start of the el camino real auto trail it started right here at presidio park and wound its way up the coast following the route of the missions later the highway 101 replaced most of el camino real and presidio park's not actually on highway 101. highway 101 is or was just a little bit to the west of here and it went through old town san diego before moving a little further west to what is pacific highway now easily the most prominent feature at presidio park is the father junipero serra museum which is located on top of the hill from the museum you can get excellent views of the san diego bay and the mission valley area of san diego some people mistakenly refer to the building as a mission though that is incorrect the presidio site was in use from 1769 until 1835 and the museum wasn't built until 1929 though it was built in the spanish mission style the museum is a great place if you want to learn more about the history of the presidio site early san diego or early california but what we are here for today is actually located below the museum next to its parking lot from the presidio parking lot if you look to the southwest you'll find what is known as the witches tower and here is the so-called witches tower which is really not much of a tower and has nothing to do with witches but i'll get to why it's called the witches tower in just a moment first let's take a look at the monument for sylvester patty which is on this building so sylvester patty was a pathfinder he was on an expedition into new mexico and his expedition came further west they got to santa catarina which is in ensenada mexico or where ensenada mexico is now and was arrested they the mexican governor thought that they might be spies for spain so they were brought here to san diego and they were held in a prison now there's a lot of websites that claim that they were held in this building that is not true at all the the reason that the plaque is here is because the prison that they were kept in is nearest to this site but this building is not original to the uh the mission or to the the presidio that was here this building was built in the 1930s so they definitely were not kept inside this building and he definitely did not die inside this building but he did die in 1828 and was buried here there's a plaque for him down here from the united states daughters of 1812 that's kind of covered under the ground and so somewhere around here uh sylvester paddy is buried his actual gravesite is not known but the first supposedly the first american to be buried in california was buried right around here somewhere so now we're going to go up and i'll show you why that this place is called the witches tower the wall around here represents the wall of the old fort like i said this is not original was built much later there's no original buildings remaining from the original presidio site so everything here is a recreation or just added later so here we are at the witch's tower top and as you can see there are there's a big pentagram in the middle and that's why this is known as the witches tower and you'll see people have uh done some artwork with eyeballs and you can see the middle of it looks like there has at least been a fire here at one point um apparently some other weird things have happened on the top of here there's reports that people found dead bodies and stuff like that but i don't believe any of that's true i looked through the san diego union tribune's archives and there has been no mention of it at all uh you do have a good view of the buildings up there and you can get a pretty interesting view of the park this is actually a recreation of a bastion for the fort has nothing to do with witches was never a jail sylvester patty was not kept here and the building is less than 100 years old so it's not even original this is always claimed to be one of the most haunted places in san diego for people who are believers in that stuff and there are definitely lots of bodies buried throughout here the original cemetery for the spanish and the kumiyai was up here the kumiyai indians actually buried people in this area up until the late 1800s the last non non-native american burial up here was in 1849 and at that point they had built the campos santo cemetery which i did a video on previously uh which i'll link to in the description but that build that cemetery opened and the one up here stopped being in use after that for non-native americans native americans continue to bury people up here just a little bit later and here's another look at the front i'm not sure what's in there it looks pretty empty and here's another look at the witch's tower from the side and as i mentioned aside from the pentagram at the top um which nobody really knows why that is there there's nothing really sinister or which related in regards to this tower it's just a recreation of a bastion as mentioned none of the original structures from the presidio site are still around everything here is a recreation but if you come out into the middle you can find these mounds where the remains of some of the structures would be buried under the ground here and that wall once again it is the outline of the original presidio site exploring presidio park could definitely take up its own video because there is so much to see and do there and every time i go i find something new that i hadn't seen before such as this time capsule that won't be opened until san diego's 300th anniversary in 2069 as this was the site of the first european settlement in california so much history happened at the presidio park site though it's important to remember that most of the buildings were built in the 1930s by the works progress administration and that includes the sinister sounding but fairly innocent witches tower whose legend has continued to grow largely thanks to google maps thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 53,373

Keywords: El Camino Real, San. Diego travel, haunted San Diego, San Diego attractions, California history, San Diego History, Witches Tower, Interstate 8, Old Town San Diego, California road trip, historic roads

Id: SPQg6oB7kJg

Length: 9min 14sec (554 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021