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LA JOLLA,
A Celebration of Its Past
Winner of San Diego Book Awards 2002
La Jolla, A Celebration of Its Past is a rich and varied
collection of vignettes and essays about historic La Jolla. Since this author believes that
"history is someone else’s point of view", the emphasis is on the extraordinary people who
helped build and shape this special place.
One pioneer was Anna Held. Anna was born in Berlin, Germany, in
1849. Shortly after arriving in San Diego as the Governess to the Ulysses S. Grant, Jr.'s
children, in 1892, Anna discovered La Jolla. It was her dream to build a house on the cliff
overlooking the ocean. When she was offered land for a mere $165, sight unseen,
she bought it. When, accompanied by the Grants, she first saw the property, she was |
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Each friend insisted she built them a place to stay, people like Shakespearean
actress Ellen Terry, Polish actress Madame Helena Modjeska, Polish statesman, composer and
pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski, and author Beatrice Harradan. Thus began what came to be
known as the Green Dragon Colony. As Anna said, "If you prefer the picturesque to the
conventional, atmosphere to style; if you care for individuality that is gracious,
informality that is refined; if you know that art is a necessity, not a luxury in life,
that beauty is food and drink; if you are one of these ... the Green Dragon will
cast its subtle spell upon you."
The place made the people and the people made the place. Such was early
La Jolla.
When our country became involved in World War I, soldiers were stationed at Camp Kearny just east of La Jolla on the mesa above the town. This attracted more people to La Jolla. In
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a few years later, land developers subdivided more of the area into La Jolla Shores,
La Jolla Hermosa, and the Muirlands.
In 1925, streetcar tracks were laid improving transportation between La Jolla
and San Diego. People could now live in La Jolla and work in San Diego. Homes started to
be built in the new subdivisions. In the new areas as well as in the older ones, streets
and sidewalks were being paved. Walking around La Jolla, you can still see signatures and
dates carved in the cement designating these original sidewalks.
The crash of 1929 halted the expansion and progress. The Depression
hit La Jolla as it did the rest of the country. It was ten years before La Jolla showed
signs of recovery.
At the end of his residency at Strong Memorial, Rochester, NY, J T Lipe
answered a letter in JAMA from an older doctor wanting an assistant. The older gentleman,
Dr. Parker, lived and worked in a small coastal community north of San Diego. So, sight
unseen, J T headed across the country with his young bride, Georgeanna, in a Model A.
According to Mrs. Lipe, when they arrived in 1936, “It was a very small town. There were
no tall buildings. Everybody was very friendly and there were very few young people. The
saying in those days was that La Jolla was a place where old people came to visit their
parents! Most everybody we met had been somebody somewhere else. We were completely
separated from San Diego."
By 1923, a small English colony had settled in La Jolla. “They drifted down
from Porterville, in the San Joaquin Valley,” said Betsy Stephen-Hassard, widow of the
British descended Dr. Quintin Stephen-Hassard. Dr. Stephen-Hassard, La Jolla dentist who
not only cared for human patients but also took care of the animals at the zoo, may have
been the area's first spear fisherman. Today the beauty of the Pacific with its kelp and
seaweed beds and incredible underwater sea life begs us no longer to spear, but to snorkel
and dive.
“So few people but what they can do.” With one of the shortest thermostats
in the country, La Jolla has attracted sportspeople including tennis champions like Little
Mo and Dodo Chaney, golf pros, surfers of international fame, actors like Cliff Robertson
and Gregory Peck, scientists including thirty-seven Nobel laureates, and fliers including
Charles and Anne Lindbergh. This book tells all their stories and more. Often it is not the
famous who make a place special. From doctors to domestics, from the pioneers of Scripps
Institution of Oceanography to the surfers of Windansea, from artists to architects, the
denizens of this "jewel by the sea" have known and expressed creativity and sometimes
brilliance.
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