SmartHunts® - Best San Diego Scavenger Hunts

San Diego offers a great variety of landmarks and culture!

Blending fun, exploration, and corporate teambuilding, SmartHunts® are an experience that will have your team buzzing with excitement. SmartHunts can customize your event to include much of what San Diego has to offer, including world-class architectural marvels, top-tier museums, a wonderful park, as well as highlighting the features of San Diego’s mix of modern and historic culture. SmartHunts will take your team on a San Diego scavenger hunt journey through this great city.

Whether your team is local to the San Diego area, or visiting from out-of-town, the SmartHunts team can create a fresh experience for your group. SmartHunts offers a unique corporate adventure tailored just for you and can take your group on any combination of San Diego’s great park, neighborhoods & landmarks, including:

1. Gaslamp Quarter
   The Gaslamp Quarter Archway on Fifth Ave near Harbor Drive welcomes you to 16 square blocks of the historic district in the heart of downtown San Diego. Running from Fourth Ave to Sixth Ave and from Broadway to Harbor Drive, it is a complementary blend of modern and 19th century Victorian architecture.

   There truly is something for everyone here in this bustling, historic neighborhood. Locally owned boutiques and national retailers are plentiful as are restaurants, cafes, steakhouses, and grills serving every type of cuisine from American to Mediterranean to Thai.

   Happy Hours abound in bars, lounges, taverns, pubs, cantinas, wine parlors and cocktail bars, as does a vibrant nightlife at theaters, live music venues, comedy clubs and dance clubs.

   Listed below are just a few of the historical architectural destinations:

   Balboa Theatre (1920s) Mission Revival, ex-Vaudeville, now Performing Arts at E St at 4th Ave
   Spreckels Theater (1912) Baroque, Performing Arts at Broadway and 1st Ave
   Old City Hall (1870s) Florentine Italianate at G St and 5th Ave
   Yuma Building (1882) Victorian Italianate Revival at G St near 5th Ave
   Nesmith-Greely Building (1888) Romanesque Revival at Market St at 5th Ave
   The U.S. Grant Hotel (1910) Classic Revival built by President Grant’s son at Broadway at 4th Ave
   The Louis Bank of Commerce (1888) Baroque Revival at 5th Ave near F St. A bank for 5 years then an oyster bar and ice cream shop on the ground floor, with Madam Cora’s extremely popular Golden Poppy Hotel (brothel) on the upper three floors.
2. Balboa Park
   Balboa Park is an exceptional location for your SmartHunts San Diego scavenger hunt!

   Created in 1868, this marvelous park occupies 1,200 acres from Russ Blvd north to Upas St and 6th Ave east to 28th St. and is 350+ acres larger than New York City’s Central Park. In addition to the world-famous San Diego Zoo there are 17 museums, 16 gardens, walking and bridle trails, green spaces, dog parks and a golf course.

   Many of the museums listed below occupy the outstanding structures built in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style for the 1915-1917 Panama-California Exposition. Others of a more contemporary style were constructed for the 1935-1936 California-Pacific International Exposition and are still in use as well.

   SW corner up to El Prado:
   San Diego Air & Space Museum – 2001 Pan American Plaza
   San Diego Automotive Museum – 2080 Pan American Plaza
   Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theatre – 2130 Pan American Plaza
   Comic-Con Museum – 2131 Pan American Plaza
   Old Cactus Garden – created in 1935 – 2150 Pan American Rd W
   Spreckels Organ Pavilion – built in 1915 – world’s largest outdoor pipe organ – 2125 Pan American Rd E
   Japanese Friendship Garden – 11+ acres – 2215 Pan American Rd E
   WorldBeat Cultural Center – 2100 Park Blvd
   Veterans Museum at Balboa Park – 2115 Park Blvd

   Central:
   Cabrillo Bridge – built in 1914 – cantilevered, multiple-arched – El Prado
   Museum of Us – anthropology – 1350 El Prado
   Institute of Contemporary Art – experimental – 1439 El Prado
   Mingei International Museum – folk arts – 1439 El Prado
   San Diego Museum of Art – fine arts – 1450 El Prado
   Timken Museum of Art – fine arts – 1500 El Prado
   Bea Evenson Fountain – 1540 El Prado
   Balboa Park Visitors Center – 1549 El Prado
   Botanical Building – built 1915 – closed for renovations until spring 2023 – 1549 El Prado
   Museum of Photographic Arts – 1649 El Prado
   San Diego Model Railroad Museum – 1649 El Prado
   Women’s Museum of California – 1649 El Prado
   Moreton Bay Fig Tree – planted in 1915 – Historical Landmark – 1788 El Prado
   San Diego Natural History Museum – founded in 1874 – 1788 El Prado
   Fleet Science Center – 1875 El Prado
   Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden – 100+ varieties – 2125 Park Blvd
   Desert Garden – 2.5 acres – 2525 Park Blvd
   Balboa Park Carousel – built in 1910 – 1889 Zoo Place

   Easy Side:
   Balboa Park Golf Course
   Morley Field Sports Complex
   Fig Tree Garden – arboretum – 2132 Upas St at Alabama St

   NW corner:
   San Diego Zoo
3. San Diego Zoo
   The San Diego Zoo is north of downtown San Diego in Balboa Park. Built in 1916 to house the animals displayed at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, this 100-acre zoo is home to more than 1,500 animals of over 600 species and subspecies as well as hundreds of thousands of plants representing more than 3,000 species.

   Everything from African Penguins to Zebras. Amphibians and reptiles, birds and fish, arthropods, and mammals, all housed in naturalistic habitats. Expert horticulturists grow the plants necessary for the animals’ diets and care for the extensive variety of botanical wonders found within the zoo grounds.

   The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is fully dedicated to preserving rare and endangered species of animals and plants through environmental conservation, research, and educational programs.

   Open every day of the year. Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
4. San Diego Air & Space Museum
   Located in the SW section of Balboa Park in the 1935 former Ford Building, the San Diego Air & Space Museum is an aviation history museum featuring actual planes, interactive and educational aircraft and spacecraft exhibits, flight simulators, artifacts, photos, films and more.

   Exhibitions running as of August 2022 include:
   Galileo: Space Visionary – an interactive exhibition featuring more than 60 exhibits.
   American Women of Flight – exhibit celebrating 100+ years of female pilots
   Space: Our Greatest Adventure – an interactive exhibition honoring space exploration
5. San Diego Automotive Museum
   The San Diego Automotive Museum is located in the SW section of Balboa Park next door to the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

   A tribute to automotive history and culture featuring an extensive collection of domestic and foreign cars and motorcycles, special exhibitions, and educational programs.
   The Indian Motorcycles and Barn Find exhibitions will run until 2024.
6. Embarcadero Marina Park – South
   Just south of the Gaslamp District, Marina Park Way leads into the park which juts out into the San Diego Bay.

   A lovely public green space with a fishing pier, a gazebo, picnic tables, bike and walking paths and marvelous views of San Diego, the City of Coronado, Coronado Bridge and the sailboats and yachts out the bay. Both parks offer shady groves of coral and eucalyptus trees and stunning sunsets.
7. Embarcadero Marina Park – North
   This park also juts out into the bay, features a walkway around its perimeter and amenities similar to Marina Park-South, with additional splendid views. The San Diego Blues Festival is held here every year.

   Heading north out of the park on Kettner Blvd leads you to Seaport Village.
8. Seaport Village
   Seaport Village is a 14-acre parcel located right on the bay and is brimming with more than 60 unique shops and restaurants as well as galleries, attractions, and entertainment options.

   Abundant natural landscapes featuring ponds and fountains are interspersed throughout the village making strolling and shopping even more enjoyable.

   The Seaport Village Carousel, built in 1895, has been fully restored and features 54 hand-carved horses.

   A promenade along the waterfront offers more stunning views and leads north to The USS Midway Museum.