Parkway Plaza and the Lost Castle Rock Ranch
On a hot afternoon in El Cajon, when the air over Interstate 8 shimmers and the parking lot feels even hotter than it should, Parkway Plaza looks like what it is: the main mall of East County, a huge, single-story, 1.3 million square foot tribute to air-conditioning, pavement, and making retail work in new ways.
Long before Sears and JCPenney showed up, though, this land was Castle Rock Ranch, part of a valley filled with vineyards, orange groves, and dirt roads.
The ranch was in a quieter El Cajon when most of the traffic on what is now Fletcher Parkway was farm-related, and the idea of 6,052 parking spaces would have seemed like a mistake in the records…