There was once a place on the edge of San Diego where you could spend the day hunting ducks, fishing, swapping stories around a wood stove and perhaps stopping in at a place called the Hotel de Mallard.
It was called Duckville.
The name sounds invented. The place sounds even more unlikely.
But Duckville really existed — a ramshackle little settlement of shacks and makeshift buildings that occupied the marshes of old False Bay, the body of water now known as Mission Bay.
It was not a conventional town. There were no neat streets, grand houses, or carefully surveyed lots.
Instead, Duckville was a loose collection of waterfront shacks associated with duck hunters and others drawn to the marshes and mudflats of Mission Bay. Historical accounts describe it as a place with no formal boundaries, more an informal destination than an incorporated community.
The Ocean Beach Historical Society dates Duckville’s existence from the mid-1880s to the early 1930s.
And it apparently had a sense of humor.
One of its shacks was known as the Hotel de Mallard — a grand name for one of the rough waterfront structures. The historic photograph is identified as showing the Hotel de Mallard among the Duckville shacks.
The name fit the setting. Mission Bay’s marshes and mudflats supported abundant waterfowl, and duck hunting became increasingly popular among settlers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Historical accounts describe False Bay as a destination for sportsmen because of its shallow waters, marshy shores, and duck habitat.
Duckville also benefited from the fact that old San Diego had a very different relationship with Mission Bay.
The bay was still commonly called False Bay, or Puerto Falso, during much of Duckville’s early history. It was a broad, shallow landscape of marshes, mudflats, and channels rather than the developed recreational waterway San Diegans know today. The city of San Diego notes that recreational development, including hunting and fishing facilities, began in False Bay in the late 19th century.
That made Duckville difficult to pin down.
It wasn’t a formally incorporated community with precise boundaries. It was a place people knew how to find.
Historical maps provide another clue that Duckville was more than a colorful story passed down over the years. A 1930 U.S. Geological Survey map labels Duckville near the eastern edge of Mission Bay, close to Tecolote. The USGS identifies the map as the 1930 La Jolla historical quadrangle.
The settlement was also vulnerable to the landscape around it.
The marshes flooded, and the rough structures could not withstand repeated inundation. The Ocean Beach Historical Society’s account says the little community had dwindled considerably by the early 1920s and eventually washed away for a second time.
A separate historical account places Duckville among the hunting and fishing shanties near the San Diego River delta and notes that flooding destroyed facilities in the area.
The exact sequence of Duckville’s destruction and rebuilding is difficult to reconstruct from surviving records, but the broader picture is clear: it was an informal settlement in a flood-prone marshland, and its existence was tied closely to the changing landscape of Mission Bay.
By the early 20th century, that landscape was already beginning to change.
The San Diego River had historically shifted its course into False Bay, and the river’s relationship with the bay helped shape the marshes and mudflats. The city of San Diego notes that a series of changes to the river and surrounding landscape ultimately led to the modern Mission Bay.
Beginning in the late 1940s, dredging and filling dramatically altered the marshes and mudflats, eventually transforming the area into today’s Mission Bay Park. The city says about 25 million cubic yards of sand and silt were dredged to create the park’s modern landforms.
Duckville gradually disappeared as that transformation accelerated.
Today, almost nothing about the modern Mission Bay landscape suggests that a tiny settlement of hunters and waterfront shacks once occupied its marshy edges.
There is no Duckville street sign.
No Hotel de Mallard.
No row of weather-beaten cabins.
But the name survives in old photographs, maps, and historical accounts — a reminder of a San Diego that was far less polished, when a patch of marshland could become a destination simply because people wanted to be close to the water and the wildlife.
Duckville wasn’t a resort.
It wasn’t a planned subdivision.
It wasn’t even really a town.
It was something stranger.
A little waterfront world built around the marshes of old False Bay.
And for several decades, that was enough.
Read more history stories here. Do you have a story to tell? Send an email to DebbieSklar@cox.net.
Sources
- San Diego Union-Tribune, “The Tales of Duckville Still Call,” Feb. 16, 2022, by Eric Duvall.
- City of San Diego, “Mission Bay History.”
- San Francisco Estuary Institute, “Mission Bay-Tecolote Creek Historical Ecology Reconnaissance Study.”
- U.S. Geological Survey, 1930 La Jolla Historical Quadrangle.
- San Diego Historical Society photograph of the Hotel de Mallard, reproduced by Historic Broadway San Diego.
