San Diego: La Jolla (July 2018)

La Jolla (July 2018) – Ritzy Suburb of San Diego
 
My spouse and I visited La Jolla on a Saturday afternoon in early July 2018. La Jolla is an affluent, hilly seaside community that occupies 7 miles of curving, rugged coastline along the Pacific Ocean approximately 12 miles north of San Diego. The name “La Jolla” may refer to the Spanish word “la joya”, meaning “the jewel”, giving La Jolla the nickname “Jewel City”. La Jolla is surrounded on three sides by beaches and ocean bluffs (some with caves for exploring), and it is notable for its wild seal congregations. La Jolla offers lodging, dining, and shopping, and the town is home to businesses in the fields of software, finance, real estate, bioengineering, medicine, and scientific research. The University of California San Diego (UCSD) is located in La Jolla, as are the Salk Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (part of UCSD), and Scripps Research Institute. 

In the 1890s the San Diego, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla Railway was built, connecting La Jolla to the rest of San Diego. La Jolla became known as a resort area. To attract visitors to the beach, the railway built facilities such as a bath house and a dance pavilion. Visitors were housed in small cottages and bungalows above La Jolla Cove, as well as in a temporary tent city that was re-erected every summer. Two of the cottages that were built in 1894 still exist: the "Red Roost" and the "Red Rest", also known as the "Neptune and Cove Tea Room"; the two cottages have been vacant since the 1980s, and are covered in tarps. The La Jolla Park Hotel opened in 1893, and the Hotel Cabrillo (now part of the La Valencia Hotel) in 1908.

In 1896 journalist and publisher Ellen Browning Scripps settled in La Jolla. She commissioned numerous notable buildings in La Jolla, many of which are now on the National Register of Historic Places, including the La Jolla Woman's Club (1914), the La Jolla Recreational Center (1915), the earliest buildings of The Bishop's School, and the Old Scripps Building at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as her own residence, built in 1915 and now housing the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the nation's oldest oceanographic institutes, was founded in 1903. From 1917 through 1964, the United States Marine Corps maintained a military base in La Jolla called Camp Calvin B. Matthews.

We walked a bit on a nature trail to view the cliffs and ocean before eating lunch at the Ocean Terrace at Georges on the Cove. Afterward, we walked on La Jolla’s main street that is lined with boutiques and restaurants. We also peeked into the La Valencia Hotel.























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