Whaley House Museum
Brick eighteen-fifties home built atop a frontier hanging site and later used as a courthouse.
The guide to the Whaley House Museum in San Diego begins with the creak of a mule cart in 1852, carrying Yankee Jim Robinson to a gallows built where the house now stands, after a boat-theft trial with jurors who owned the stolen boat. It follows Thomas Whaley, who witnessed the hanging and later built his family home on that same ground, and the footsteps his family reported hearing upstairs. The guide also covers the house's stint as San Diego's only courthouse, a role the building would not see again for well over a century. Listen for why a modern judge chose the date he did to bring court back to this room.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.