Seaport Village & Tuna Harbor: Coastal Charm and The Unconditional Surrender

Why is it significant?

Walk past the twenty-five-foot bronze sculpture Unconditional Surrender, depicting the iconic Times Square kiss between a celebrating sailor and a dental nurse on V-J Day in nineteen forty-five, and enter the meandering cobblestone pathways of Seaport Village.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk past the twenty-five-foot bronze sculpture Unconditional Surrender, depicting the iconic Times Square kiss between a celebrating sailor and a dental nurse on V-J Day in nineteen forty-five, and enter the meandering cobblestone pathways of Seaport Village. With its weatherboard cottages, Spanish tile roofs, and winding lagoons, this fourteen-acre waterfront park captures California's seaside nostalgia.

Step inside the pavilion housing the historic Seaport Village Carousel: built by master carver Charles I. D. Looff in Brooklyn in eighteen ninety-five, it features fifty-four hand-carved wooden animals, including horses, camels, and giraffes with real horsehair tails, preserved and spinning to organ music for well over a century.

In seventeen sixty-nine, the Spanish expedition of Gaspar de Portolà and Father Junípero Serra camped on this very shore. Many sailors succumbed to scurvy and were buried on the sandy beachhead, giving this point its historic Spanish cartographic name: Punta de los Muertos, or Dead Men's Point.

Head eastward past the convention center toward the cultural jewel of Balboa Park.