San Marcos ( SAN MAR-kohs; Spanish for “St. Mark”) is a city in the North County region of San Diego County, California. As of the 2020 census, the city’s population was 94,833. It is the site of California State University San Marcos. The city is bordered by Escondido to the east, Encinitas to the southwest, Carlsbad to the west, and Vista to the northwest. Lake San Marcos is an enclave, or county island, in the southwestern share of the city, within San Marcos’ sphere of change but technically an unincorporated community.

According to historical legends, the San Luis Rey Mission flocks were robbed by a little band of Native Americans in the late 18th century. Fleeing the Spanish troops, the Native Americans escaped to the hills. While pursuing the Native Americans, in 1797 the Spaniards came on a fertile valley, which was named Los Vallecitos de San Marcos (Little Valleys of Saint Mark) to great compliment the daylight of discovery: April 25, St. Mark’s Day. On April 22, 1840, Governor Juan B. Alvarado contracted Rancho Vallecitos de San Marcos to his relative, Jose María Alvarado. Jose Alvarado was killed at the Pauma Massacre in 1846, and the home was left to his wife; she after that sold the house to Lorenzo Soto. In the late 1850s, Soto sold allowance of his home to Cave Couts, and his family was soon raising livestock. Although Cave Couts owned the land, Major Gustavus French Merriam from Topeka, Kansas, made the first unshakable settlement. Merriam homesteaded 160 acres (0.65 km) in the north Twin Oaks Valley and began wine and honey production.

German and Dutch immigrants began upsetting into the area in the ahead of time 1880s. In 1883, a few miles south of the settlement, John H. Barham (for whom the present-day Barham Drive is named) founded the first town in the area, originally situated upon the southeast corner of what are now Rancho Santa Fe Road and San Marcos Boulevard. By 1884, the town of Barham had a reveal office, blacksmith, feed store and weekly newspaper. In 1887, the San Marcos Land Company bought almost whatever of the San Marcos house formerly owned by the Couts relations and promptly on bad terms the house into tracts. Soon the hills began attracting home-seekers.

The original town of San Marcos was about a mile north of Barham, at the intersection of what is now Grand Avenue and Rancho Santa Fe Road. In 1887, the Santa Fe Railroad announced that it was going to lay tracks going through the valley, but to the disappointment of the citizens, the tracks were laid one mile (1.6 km) from the center of the town. By 1896, San Marcos was a community similar to its own stores, post office, blacksmith, and railroad depot. The first scholastic in the area, which was started in Barham in 1886, had been moved to San Marcos three years later, as Barham was fading due to its isolate from the railroad. To prevent San Marcos from burden a thesame fate, in 1903 the people of the town picked taking place their homes and moved a couple miles east along the railroad tracks to what now are Mission Road and Pico Avenue. By 1905, the town had every convenience, including rural mail delivery and telephone service. Later that thesame year, the Richland School (now a wedding chapel upon Woodland Avenue) was built, becoming the second intellectual in San Marcos. The main issue in San Marcos in the 19th and to the front 20th centuries was farming. In the mid-20th century, dairies and poultry production became a big part of the thing in the town.