Balboa Park is a 1,200-acre cultural park in San Diego and one of the city’s defining public spaces, combining museums, theaters, gardens, restaurants, and the San Diego Zoo in a landscape with roots reaching back to an 1835 land reserve for public use. The area also included a Kumeyaay village and later an urban Native American neighborhood. Protected by California law in 1870, it developed gradually through civic planning and Kate Sessions’s horticultural work. Its best-known architecture came from the 1915–16 and 1935–36 expositions, especially along El Prado. Recognized in 1977 as a National Historic Landmark, it remains San Diego’s principal landscaped commons and cultural center.