Local Native Americans, the Kumeyaay, called this location mat kulaaxuuy (IPA: [mat kəlaːxuːj]), lit. “land of holes” (mat = “land”). The topographic feature that gave rise to the name “holes” is uncertain; it probably refers to sea-level caves located on the north-facing bluffs, which are visible from La Jolla Shores. It is suggested[citation needed] that the Kumeyaay name for the area was transliterated by the Spanish settlers as La Jolla. Another suggestion for the origin of the name is that it is an alternative spelling of the Spanish phrase la joya, which means “the jewel”. Despite being disputed by scholars, this derivation of the name has been widely cited in popular culture. This supposed origin gave rise to the nickname “The Jewel”. The name may also come from the Spanish La Hoya, meaning a geographic hollow. Different spelling conventions over the years would permit this to be written as La Jolla.
During the Mexican period of San Diego’s history, La Jolla was mapped as pueblo land and contained about 60 lots. When California became a state in 1850, the La Jolla area was incorporated as part of the chartered City of San Diego. In 1870, Charles Dean acquired several of the pueblo lots and subdivided them into an area that became known as La Jolla Park. Dean was unable to develop the land and left San Diego in 1881. A real estate boom in the 1880s led speculators Frank T. Botsford and George W. Heald to further develop the sparsely settled area.
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 a temporary tent city erected every summer. Two of the cottages that were built in 1894, the “Red Roost” and the “Red Rest”, also known as the “Neptune and Cove Tea Room”, still exist and are the oldest buildings in La Jolla that are still on their original site. The two cottages have been vacant since the 1980s, boarded up and covered in tarpaulins while their fate was debated. In November 2020 the Red Rest was largely destroyed by fire.
The La Jolla Park Hotel opened in 1893. The Hotel Cabrillo was built in 1908 by “Squire” James A. Wilson and was later incorporated into the La Valencia Hotel.
By 1900, La Jolla comprised 100 buildings and 350 residents. The first reading room (library) was built in 1898. A volunteer fire brigade was organized in 1907; the city of San Diego established a regular fire house in 1914. Livery stable owner Nathan Rannells served successively as La Jolla’s volunteer fire captain, first police officer (the only San Diego police officer north of Mission Valley), and first postmaster.
La Jolla Elementary School began educating local children in 1896.The Bishop’s School opened in 1909. La Jolla High School was established in 1922. Between 1951 and 1963, other elementary schools (Bird Rock, Decatur, Scripps, and Torrey Pines) were established in the area to ease overcrowding. The La Jolla Beach and Yacht Club (later the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club) was built in 1927.
In 1896 journalist and publisher Ellen Browning Scripps settled in La Jolla, where she lived for the last 35 years of her life. She was wealthy in her own right from her investments and writing, and she inherited a large sum from her brother George H. Scripps in 1900. She devoted herself to philanthropic endeavors, particularly those benefiting her adopted home of La Jolla. She commissioned many of La Jolla’s most notable buildings, usually designed by Irving Gill or his nephew and partner Louis John Gill. Many of these buildings are now on the National Register of Historic Places or are listed as historic by the city of San Diego; these include 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. Her donations also launched the Scripps Memorial Hospital in 1924 (originally located on Prospect Street in La Jolla until it moved to its present site in 1964), the Scripps Metabolic Clinic (now the Scripps Research Institute), and the Children’s Pool. Ellen Browning Scripps also founded Scripps College, a women’s college, in 1926. Scripps College is located in Claremont in Los Angeles County (not to be confused with Clairemont, a community of San Diego).
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the nation’s oldest oceanographic institutes, was founded in 1903 by William Emerson Ritter, chair of the zoology department at the University of California, Berkeley, with financial support from Scripps and her brother E. W. Scripps. At first the institution operated out of a boathouse in Coronado. In 1905, they purchased a 170-acre (69 ha) site in La Jolla, where the Institution still stands today. The first laboratory buildings there opened in 1907. The institution became part of the University of California in 1912. Ultimately, it became the nucleus for the establishment of the University of California San Diego.
From 1917 through 1964, the United States Marine Corps maintained a military base in La Jolla. The base was used for marksmanship training and was known as Camp Calvin B. Matthews. During and after World War II, the population of La Jolla grew, causing residential development to draw close to the base, so that it became less and less suitable as a firing range because of risk to the adjacent civilian population. Meanwhile, the site was being eyed as a location for a proposed new campus of the University of California. In 1962, Camp Matthews was declared surplus by the Marine Corps. The base formally closed in 1964, and that same year, the first class of undergraduates enrolled in the University of California San Diego.
Local civic leaders had long toyed with the idea of a San Diego campus of the University of California, and the quest became more definite following World War II. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, under its director Roger Revelle, had become an important defense contractor, and local aerospace companies like Convair were pressing for local training for their scientists and engineers. The state legislature proposed the idea in 1955, and the Regents of the University formally approved it in 1960. During the planning stage of the university’s establishment, it was briefly known as the “University of California, La Jolla”, but the name was changed to “University of California, San Diego” before its founding in 1960. The founding chancellor was Herbert York, named in 1961, and the second chancellor was John Semple Galbraith, named in 1964. The university was designed to have a “college” system; there are now seven colleges. The first college was established in 1965 and was named Revelle College after Roger Revelle, who is regarded as the “father” of the university. A medical school was established in 1968. The landmark Geisel Library with its Brutalist architecture opened in 1970. The university is the second largest employer in the city and has the 7th largest research expenditure in the country.
The Camp Matthews site for the University was selected with some hesitation; one of the concerns was “whether La Jollans in particular would lay aside old prejudices in order to welcome a culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse professoriate into their midst”. La Jolla had a history of restrictive housing policies, often specified in deeds and ownership documents. In La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Hermosa, only people with pure European ancestry could own property; this excluded Jews, who were not considered white. Such “restrictive covenants” were once fairly common throughout the United States; the 1948 Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer ruled them to be unenforceable, and Congress outlawed them twenty years later via the Fair Housing Act (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968). However, realtors and property owners in La Jolla continued to use more subtle ways of preventing or discouraging Jews from owning property there. Revelle stated the issue bluntly: “You can’t have a university without having Jewish professors. The Real Estate Broker’s Association and their supporters in La Jolla had to make up their minds whether they wanted a university or an anti-Semitic covenant. You couldn’t have both.” The issue was overcome; La Jolla now boasts a thriving Jewish population, and there are four synagogues in La Jolla.
Mount Soledad is an 822-foot-tall (251 m) hill on the eastern edge of La Jolla and one of the highest points in San Diego. A large Christian cross was placed at the top in 1913 as a prominent landmark. It has been replaced twice, most recently in 1954 with a 29-foot-tall (8.8 m) cross (43 feet (13 m) tall including the base). Originally known as the “Mount Soledad Easter Cross”, its presence on publicly owned land was challenged in the 1980s as a violation of the separation of church and state. Since then the cross has had a war memorial built around it and was renamed “Mount Soledad Veterans War Memorial”.
The issue has been in almost continual litigation ever since, with the city attempting to sell or give away the land under the cross. By an act of Congress, the federal government took possession of it under eminent domain in 2006. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declared the cross unconstitutional in 2011, and the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear an appeal. In December 2013, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns ordered that the cross be removed within 90 days, but stayed the order pending a forthcoming appeal by the government.
On July 20, 2015, a group called the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association reported that it had bought the land under the cross from the Department of Defense for $1.4 million. On September 7, 2016, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a one-page ruling, ordering dismissal of the case and an end to all current appeals, stating that the case was now moot because the cross was no longer on government land. Both sides agreed that this decision puts a final end to the case.
La Jolla became an art colony in 1894 when Anna Held (also known as Anna Held Heinrich) established the Green Dragon Colony. This was a cluster of twelve cottages designed by Irving Gill, who had moved to San Diego only a year earlier and later became San Diego’s best-known architect.
The La Jolla Playhouse was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Mel Ferrer. It became inactive in 1959, but was revived in 1983 on the University of California campus under the leadership of Des McAnuff. It now incorporates three theaters: the Mandell Weiss Theatre (1983), the Mandell Weiss Forum (1991) and the Potiker Theater (2005).
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego was founded in 1941 in La Jolla, in the former home of Ellen Browning Scripps (designed by Irving J. Gill). The museum has undergone several renovations and expansions, and is working on plans to triple its size.
The La Jolla Music Society was founded in 1941 as the Musical Arts Society of La Jolla by Nikolai Sokoloff, former conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. It presented the premieres of commissioned works in the auditorium of La Jolla High School before presenting their concerts in the Sherwood Auditorium of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Since April 2019, the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center is the permanent home of La Jolla Music Society and hosts world-class performances presented by LJMS as well as other San Diego arts presenters. Additionally, The Conrad will see a wide range of conferences, corporate meetings, and private events.
In the mid-20th century, Downtown La Jolla was a major regional retail district with branches of major department stores Walker Scott and upscale specialty department stores Saks Fifth Avenue and I. Magnin, all on Girard Avenue within walking distance of each other. Boutique shopping continues there, but heavyweight retail presence, since the closing of the last downtown La Jolla department store, Saks Fifth Avenue, in 2004, has long since moved to Westfield UTC and other adjacent shopping centers.
