Fall• Winter 2020 Volume 39, No 2 La Jolla Historical Society
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FALL• WINTER 2020 VOLUME 39, NO 2 LA JOLLA HISTORICAL SOCIETY MISSION The La Jolla Historical Society inspires and empowers the community to make La Jolla’s diverse past a relevant part of contemporary life. VISION The La Jolla Historical Society looks toward the future while celebrating the past. We preserve and share La Jolla’s distinctive f there is one thing on virtual programs, delivered online or by chaparral and entered from roads off old many years later she felt compelled to put sense of place and encourage quality in the urban built a global pandemic social media. We had a very successful Virtual environment. The Society serves as a thriving community Highway 101, it was a little-known setting her memories in a book. “My physical ties resource and gathering place where residents and visitors provides, it’s perspective, Garden Party on August 22, which you can view where a group of isolated scientists and were cut when I went away to college,” she explore history, art, ideas and culture. I quickly dispatching any on our YouTube channel, and we’re extremely geneticists studied and planted varieties of noted, “but as I write about my youth I BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2018-2019 notions of community grateful to Board members Meg Davis and agricultural crops to improve flavor, disease realize how my sense of self. .was shaped isolation and neutrality Lucy Jackson for their leadership in organizing Suzanne Sette, President resistance and ability to be shipped long by unique experiences of living on The Matthew Mangano, Vice President from the global order. this event. In November we’re presenting a Richard Wiildman, Esq, Secretary And so it is with our webinar entitled Race Talk with UCSD Athletic distances for growing American markets Station” Nick Agelidis Ph.D., Treasurer during and beyond the World War II years. Today virtually all evidence of the Weston Anson, Immediate Past President organization. The La Jolla Director Earl Edwards and business executive TOR’S MESSAGE TOR’S Historical Society operates Jim DeBello. In January, we’re presenting an It had four groups of buildings including horticulture station has been erased – the James Alcorn, AIA a portfolio of six mission - online and digital media storytelling event offices, labs, sheds, a barn, a lath house, a buildings, the fences, the roads and the Elizabeth Thiele Barkett George Coles delivery functions: exhi- entitled The Decameron Project in collaboration reservoir and nine acres regularly planted for arroyos are gone. So, too, the coyotes, Ruth Covell, MD Heath Fox bitions, publications, with Write Out Loud, San Diego Writers Ink, two growing seasons per year. About a half- raccoons, bobcats, deer, gophers and snakes. Ann Craig DIREC educational programs, and the San Diego Central Library. Look for dozen small adobe houses enabled staff, So, too, the neat rows of cultivated vegetables. Heather Crane, AIA community events, archive and collections forthcoming announcements about these Meg Davis workers and their families to Debra Duford accessibility, and historic preservation consultation. online activities. live on site. David Goldberg All have been disrupted, cancelled, suspended, In the meantime, we want all our members Beverley, her parents and Lucy Jackson postponed or in some way affected by the and donors to know how grateful we are for LETTERTHE EDITOR FROM older brother, Tommy, moved Jeffrey W. Kirsch, Ph.D. COVID 19 pandemic. your continued support. Thank you to everyone Carol Olten and her Samoyed Nanook, photographed at the Molly McClain, Ph.D. The list is long of the activities we cancelled who contributed to the Society during this Dreamery on Park Row March, 2020 here in 1937 when she was only Anna Palmer two years old, her mother Melanie Showalter this year in response to the pandemic, which unprecedented lockdown – thank you for your EXECUTIVE Melissa K. Snook include restrictions that prohibit or limit social support in helping build our bridge to recovery! ne of the greatest perks of being a descending from an old Virginia Bryn Young, Associate AIA gatherings and program activities. Exhibition Thanks also to the members of our Board of historian is discovering history you family, her father a graduate of opening receptions, the La Jolla Concours Directors for their service, perseverance, and never knew. Like the story of Box 150. the University of California, STAFF O d’Elégance & Motor Car Classic, the Secret leadership. In troubled times, history institutions Heath Fox, Executive Director 150 was the post office box in La Jolla Davis. Growing up she found [email protected] Garden Tour, silent film nights on the lawn, provide a crucial sense of connection, place, for the U.S. Horticultural Field Station at it “a place where the landscape Landmark Group lectures, youth summer and continuity—as well a mirror to reflect on Bill Carey, Business Assistant Torrey Pines, a 63-acre facility operating had a beauty and significance all [email protected] camps, and the Scripps Luncheon are some of a better future. There is much to be thankful from 1922 through the 1950s where its own and the breezes always the casualties. Knowing that the pandemic for at the La Jolla Historical Society as we look Dana Hicks, Deputy Director/Collections Manager scientists and agriculturalists maintained fresh and smelled of the sea.” [email protected] recovery will be uneven and protracted, be assured ahead, and we are extremely grateful for your She rode horses, explored canyons, that we will return to these activities as the situation support, generosity, and encouragement. field gardens, primarily in later years for the Carol Olten, Historian study of different varieties of gourds, played in caves and climbed [email protected] allows, and with a renewed commitment to relevant and engaging programming. Heath Fox cantaloupes and lettuce. The aim was to cliffs withreckless abandon MAGAZINE Over the near-term, we have been working Executive Director determine which could best be grown as through most of her childhood Editor Contributors major food crops in some of California’s – “our parents didn’t worry about Carol Olten Bill Canning largest agricultural lands such as the Imperial us,” she writes, “although maybe Design & Layout Bill Carey Julia de Beauclair James Guthrie and San Joaquin valleys. they should have.” Once, after Dana Hicks an accident with the plow mules Columnists Beverley Whitaker Rodgers witnessed the Molly McClain Jules and Jim, she ended up for Heath Fox Lori Thiele The La Jolla Historical operation first-hand as the daughter of Dr. Carol Olten Thomas W. Whitaker who ran the field treatment and recovery at the Printer Society appreciates station in the 1940s and 50s with his family old Scripps Hospital. Eventually Neyenesch Printers living on site in a small pueblo-style house both she and Tommy were the participation next to the vegetable fields. Some years ago enrolled in La Jolla’s Balmer GENERAL INFORMATION Mailing Address: Contact Information: she decided to write a book about her unusual School and La Jolla, she recalls, PO Box 2085 858•459•5335 of the speakers, childhood experiences growing up in this became the place “out of the La Jolla, CA 92038 [email protected] horticultural outpost when a trip into La Jolla sticks” where “we shopped, Beverley Whitaker Rodgers (above) cuddles one of her pet kittens as a child. Isolated buildings (email) presenters, and Locations seemed like a journey to the moon. The title, dined and did business.” Her (below) at Box 150 , the Horticultural Field Station at Torrey Pines where she grew up. Office and Research Monday - Friday 7846 Eads Avenue 10 a.m. - 4.p.m. attendees of the “Reflections From Box 150: Chronicles mother, Mary, sold eggs produced La Jolla, CA 92037 of a Childhood Growing Up on the US by the family’s chickens for 50 cents a The fields where she and Tommy looked for Virtual Garden Party Horticultural Field Station Near Torrey dozen to the local bridge club. Her father’s arrowheads and fossilized seashells left from Wisteria Cottage Wednesday - Sunday Noon - 4 p.m. Pines” is now being published. She gave me career peaked with pioneering work in thousand years old civilizations are chock-a- 780 Prospect Street La Jolla, CA 92037 held August 22, 2020. the opportunity of previewing a copy; I took agricultural genetics, including a mutation block with industrial buildings and commercial great pleasure in discovering this slice of La of Great Lakes lettuce that became the complexes. Time marched on. But not www.lajollahistory.org Jolla history that seemed totally new to me. “iceberg” heads now in most supermarkets. necessarily forward. Follow the Society on The field station was located two miles Although Beverley’s life at Box 150 ended south of what is now Torrey Pines State with her going away to college and becoming Reserve on land leased from the City of San a teacher and the station closed when the – Carol Olten Editor Cover: American naturalist and writer John Bur- Diego. Surrounded by a wilderness of native Department of Agriculture’s lease expired, roughs made his last visit to La Jolla in the winter of Thank you for joining the Party! 1920 when he was photographed in front of Wisteria Cottage. He died on the train trip back to his beloved Catskills in early 1921. 3 . n the early twentieth century, newcomers to San Diego invariably commented on the wildflowers that sprung up after the winter rains, covering hillsides with patches of purple and yellow flowers, wild mustard, and flaming Iorange poppies. Among them was philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps who was delighted by the variety of plants that came to life out of seemingly barren ground. Intrigued, she commissioned the artist Albert R.