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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