When Pacific Beach was founded in 1887 its founders recognized that development of their new suburb would depend on reliable transportation to and from downtown San Diego. They formed the San Diego and Pacific Beach Railway Company and received a franchise from the San Diego city council granting them a right of way around the northeast corner of Mission Bay (then called False Bay) from a ‘point on the Pacific Ocean Beach’ to Old Town. At Old Town it would connect with the San Diego & Old Town Street Railroad, which began service between Old Town and a depot at the corner of Broadway and Kettner Boulevard (then D and Arctic streets) in October 1887. These two railroads would be consolidated to form the San Diego, Old Town & Pacific Beach Railway in April 1888.

The railway’s route in Pacific Beach was laid out in the original Pacific Beach subdivision map of October 1887, which shows the right of way following Grand Avenue from a depot near the beach to what is now Mission Bay Drive at the far eastern side of the community, where it turned south toward Old Town. Grand Avenue was made wider than other streets in Pacific Beach, 125 feet rather than 80 feet, to accommodate the railroad (the diagonal section of Grand Avenue on the 1887 map east of Eleventh Street, now Lamont, has since been reclassified as extensions of Balboa and Garnet avenues and Grand extended east of Lamont over what was then Ivy Avenue). The route over Balboa and Garnet avenues was necessary at the time to circumvent the Pacific Beach Driving Park, an oval racetrack with a one-mile course, which was also being built in 1887 north of Mission Bay and east of Rose Creek.

Construction of the Pacific Beach railroad began at Morena in December 1887 and progressed north and west around the racetrack as far as Lamont Street by January 1888. At Morena a temporary interchange was built to connect with the California Southern Railroad, a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway that ran along the east side of Mission Bay linking San Diego to its transcontinental railway system. The interchange allowed trains to run over the California Southern tracks from its station downtown, switch over to the newly laid Pacific Beach railroad track at Morena and continue on to Lamont and Grand. On January 28, 1888, two trains brought an estimated 2500 spectators there to celebrate the laying of the cornerstone for the first building constructed in Pacific Beach, the San Diego College of Letters at Lamont and Garnet (then College) Avenue, where Pacific Plaza is located today.

Over the next few months the rails were extended west on Grand to a depot at the beach and south from Morena toward Old Town parallel to and west of the California Southern tracks, crossing the San Diego River over a newly built bridge. South of the river the Pacific Beach line passed to the east side of the California Southern tracks over a grade crossing and continued into Old Town, where it joined the existing line that connected Old Town to the San Diego depot at Broadway and Kettner. Through trains began running between the railroad’s San Diego and Pacific Beach depots on April 29, 1888.

The Old Town railroad had begun service in 1887 with a new steam ‘dummy’ locomotive, which became the San Diego, Old Town and Pacific Beach Railway No. 1 when the two railroads were consolidated in 1888 (dummy locomotives had an outer housing that hid much of their running gear so as not to frighten people and horses on street railways). This locomotive was joined by a pair of larger 24-ton dummies from the Baldwin Locomotive Works (Nos. 2 and 3) and passenger coaches ‘elegantly finished in hard woods’ before the railroad began service to and from Pacific Beach. Most of the trains were short, just a combination passenger/express car and a passenger coach or two in addition to the engine. Initially there were six round trips daily, with the first train leaving Pacific Beach at 6 AM and the last train returning at 9 PM, although the time card promised that on Sundays trains would run from San Diego to Pacific Beach hourly from 8 AM to 6 PM. The round trip fare was 25 cents.

After departure from the downtown depot and stops at Old Town and Morena, the first stop in Pacific Beach was the driving park (racetrack), followed by  stops for Rose Canyon and the asbestos works. The asbestos works, located about where Soledad Mountain Road intersects Garnet Avenue today, produced asbestos boiler coatings and asbestos paint and depended on the railroad for delivery of raw materials from a mine near Elsinore and for shipping finished goods, mostly to the port of San Diego. The asbestos works closed and the stop was removed from the railroad’s timetable in 1892.

The next stop was the college station at Lamont Street, serving the College of Letters two blocks to the north. The college was the principal cultural and economic activity in Pacific Beach from its opening in 1888 until it closed in 1891. Although many students and faculty lived on campus or elsewhere in Pacific Beach others commuted from San Diego, and the railroad also brought crowds from San Diego for ‘elocution contests’ and other activities and ceremonies at the college. When the second college building, Stough Hall, was opened in January 1890 a special train carried several carloads of people from the city. The San Diego Union reported that the college buildings were brilliantly lighted and the avenue from the cars to the buildings illuminated with rows of Chinese lanterns on either side.

Near today’s Bayard Street at the western end of Grand the tracks turned south into the depot grounds, which included an engine house where locomotives could be parked and maintained. The equipment and crews were based at the depot grounds where the trains began and ended their daily runs, and crew members and their families lived in a row of houses on Reed Avenue adjacent to the depot grounds. A hotel and pavilion were built overlooking the beach near the end of the line as an attraction for passengers. During the summer of 1888 the railroad promoted band concerts featuring the Red Hussar Band on Sundays at the pavilion, where sports including surf bathing could also be indulged in.

With two new Baldwin locomotives in service the general manager of the Pacific Beach railway claimed that the line could carry 20,000 passengers each day, but even on summer Sundays with the Red Hussar Band playing at the pavilion actual ridership was far less. The original schedule of six trains daily and hourly departures on Sundays was steadily cut back, to five trains daily and 8 on Sunday in September 1888, five daily and Sunday in May 1889, and four in October 1889. After August 1890 the timetable showed only three trains daily; the first train left Pacific Beach at 7:30 and the last train returned at 6. The round-trip fare was still 25¢.

The San Diego, Old Town & Pacific Beach Railway’s time cards also noted that a stage to La Jolla met the morning train and returned in time to connect with the evening train at Pacific Beach. However, La Jolla residents wanted a railroad connection of their own and in 1893 the railway’s owners obtained a franchise to extend the line from Pacific Beach to La Jolla. The extension ran from Grand Avenue in Pacific Beach north along what is now Mission Boulevard to about Wilbur Street, where it turned toward the northwest and followed a route that is now La Jolla Boulevard, La Jolla Hermosa Avenue and Electric Avenue in La Jolla. Between today’s Bonair Street and Sea Lane the right of way crossed residential blocks, then continued over Cuvier to Prospect Street. Construction began in March 1894 and was completed in May.

At a ceremony on May 15 attended by a large crowd that had ridden excursion trains from the city, Mrs. Emma Harris, a guest at the La Jolla hotel, was invited to drive the last spike ‘which lay glittering like pure gold on the last tie with a silver sledge nearby’. The San Diego Union reported that ‘contrary to tradition’ she did not miss the mark and drove the spike to its last resting place while the assembly cheered and the band played. A month after the last spike ceremony the line was extended another 1400 feet along Prospect Street where a shed was put up to serve as a depot.

The new San Diego, Pacific Beach & La Jolla Railway timetable continued to list three trains daily, including Sunday, with morning, mid-day and late-afternoon departures. Since the railroad’s light dummy engines were not well suited to the longer distance and running time and the steeper grades of the new route one of the Baldwin dummies, No. 2, was exchanged with the Coronado Railroad for a more capable ‘saddle tank’ locomotive that had once operated on the New York elevated railroad. The new locomotive was also given the number 2 and both the new No. 2 and No. 3, the line’s other Baldwin dummy, were re-lettered S.D., P.B. & L.J. Ry. Engine No. 1, the dummy inherited from the Old Town railway, was retired and kept in the engine house as a back-up.

In Pacific Beach the college had closed in 1891 and the community adapted by becoming a center of lemon cultivation. Most of the lemon ranches were located in the vicinity of the former college station at Lamont and Grand, which was also close to the community’s stores, churches and school. In 1898 the hotel and pavilion were also moved from their original locations near the foot of Grand Avenue to this central area. In its new location at the corner of Hornblend and Morrell streets the pavilion was adjacent to the railway line, which then ran on Balboa Avenue. The pavilion building was converted to a lemon packing facility which cured and shipped carloads of lemons from a siding connected to the railway line.

In 1899 the Pacific Beach and La Jolla railroad was sold to E. S. Babcock, who also owned the San Diego, Cuyamaca & Eastern Railway which served Lemon Grove, La Mesa, El Cajon and Lakeside from a depot at the foot of Tenth Street in San Diego (following the route of today’s Orange Line trolley). In 1904 Babcock began construction of an electric street railway to connect the San Diego depots of his two railroads. The line ran from the depot of the Pacific Beach and La Jolla line at the foot of C Street (it had been moved a block north from Broadway), along C and Sixth streets to L Street (where it passed the National City & Otay Railway’s downtown depot, now the 207 Bar at Hard Rock Hotel), then over what is now the ‘Gaslamp Diagonal’ to the Cuyamaca depot at Tenth and Commercial. When this line opened in 1905 electric streetcars met trains at each depot and traveled through the downtown area to the other depots, where trains would be held for the cars’ arrival. Passengers could also board the electric cars at central locations downtown and transfer to steam trains at the depots.

When the electric cars appeared on the C and Sixth street line they were lettered ‘Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway’, and a notice appeared in the San Diego Union announcing the ‘Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway – Electric cars along C and Sixth streets connect with all incoming and out-bound trains on the N.C. & O. Ry., S.D.C. & E. Ry and S.D., P.B. & L.J. Ry. Day or night’. In 1906 Babcock officially incorporated the Los Angeles and San Diego Beach Railway Company, stating its intention to build a railroad connecting Los Angeles and La Jolla and to acquire the San Diego, Old Town & Pacific Beach, the San Diego, Pacific Beach & La Jolla and the National City & Otay steam railroads to make a line stretching from Los Angeles to Tijuana. The new company did acquire the Pacific Beach and the La Jolla railroad companies (which had never actually been merged) and they were absorbed along with the C and Sixth street electric line. The Otay railroad was never acquired and the line was never extended north of La Jolla but from then on the railroad between San Diego and La Jolla via Pacific Beach was officially the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway, although it was generally known as the La Jolla line.

The new Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway updated its schedule to add two round trips daily, beginning and ending at La Jolla where the rolling stock and trainmen were then based. Two round trips, one in the morning and the other the last run of the day, were mixed trains that carried freight in addition to passengers. The mixed trains included a passenger/express car and even freight cars in addition to a passenger coach, and their schedules overlapped with the passenger trains, making it necessary to operate a separate train with a second engine and crew. The passenger-only trains were scheduled for a 40-minute run between San Diego and La Jolla. On Sundays only the three passenger trains operated, as before. The new schedule also continued an extra ‘theater train’ on Saturday night, introduced in November 1903, which left La Jolla at 7:10 PM and returned from San Diego at 11:10 PM.

In addition to its new name and schedule, the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway also undertook an upgrade of its motive power in 1906. The Baldwin dummy which had been S.D., P.B. & L.J. Ry. No. 3 was rebuilt, with its dummy housing cut back into a cab; it became L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 1. The other original Baldwin dummy, which had been traded to the Coronado Railroad in 1894 and rebuilt there as a tender engine, was reacquired and became L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 2 (the saddle tank former New York Elevated engine it had been traded for and had become the second S.D., P.B. & L.J. Ry No. 2, was disposed of).

Another Baldwin locomotive, an older tender engine named ‘Captain Jadwin’, was also transferred from the Coronado Railroad (E. S. Babcock owned the Coronado Railroad too) and became L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 3. The coal-burning steam locomotives were also converted to burn fuel oil at about this time.

The Pacific Beach railroad’s right of way originally entered Pacific Beach from the east over what are now Mission Bay Drive and Garnet and Balboa avenues in order to avoid a race track at the northeast corner of Mission Bay. By 1906 the race track had been abandoned and the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway proposed to shorten its route and eliminate the sharp curve around the race track by realigning the right of way across the former race track property following the route of today’s Grand Avenue (then called Ivy Avenue). The proposal was approved and work began at a point south of the former race track in January 1907. The ‘Captain Jadwin’, L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 3, was used to haul the work train.

In La Jolla the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway laid tracks on Silverado Street from its right of way on Prospect Street to Ivanhoe Avenue and established a new depot at the corner of Silverado and Ivanhoe in 1907. The line was then extended on Silverado, north on Exchange Place and west on Prospect where it joined the original line near the site of the old La Jolla depot at Prospect and Fay, forming a loop.

Further south, the railroad acquired the two blocks on either side of Rushville Street between railroad’s right of way and Draper Avenue (then Orange Street). The city closed that block of Rushville Street and the railroad used the property for an engine house and a  ‘wye’, tracks that entered the engine house from the main line in either direction and allowed engines to turn around by backing out in the other direction.

The construction projects in 1907 had improved certain sections of the line but in many places trains were operating over tracks originally laid twenty years earlier and not necessarily in the best condition. On January 16, 1908 the 1:55 train from the San Diego depot was steaming through Middletown ‘at a fair rate of speed’ when the former Baldwin dummy that had been rebuilt as L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 1 derailed and turned over on its side. The engineer, Thomas Robertson, was pinned in the engine’s cab and scalded to death by steam and the fireman, Thomas Fitzgerald, was also badly burned and died 10 days later. The passenger cars remained upright on the tracks and no passengers were injured. The railroad blamed the accident on ‘spreading of the rails’, saying that the spikes that held one of the rails had come loose and the rail had shifted. The original 35-pound rails were in the process of being replaced by heavier 60-pound rails but that work had not yet occurred at the site of the accident.

In the week following the accident nearly 200 residents of Pacific Beach and La Jolla signed a petition asking the city council to investigate the ‘conditions and methods’ of the railroad since their ‘comforts and conveniences’ and even their lives were at risk when ‘forced to use’ the railroad. The petition claimed that railroad was in a ‘frightfully dangerous condition’; many of the ties were rotten and spikes could be extracted with the fingers. The engines and cars were old and small, out of date and without the safety equipment the law required. The petition added that ‘the convenience or wishes of the citizens are in no way considered’ as to train service or the time table and the trains were ‘too few in number and are run at inconvenient hours’. The council agreed to an inspection trip over the line after which a majority concluded that the statements in the petition were exaggerated and the line was safe for travel. One council member dissented, claiming that the railroad had used the time since the wreck to cover up its worst deficiencies.

In an effort to modernize its old and small and out of date equipment a new McKeen gasoline motor car was purchased from the Union Pacific shops in Omaha in April 1908. The McKeen car was powered by a 200 horsepower six-cylinder gasoline engine mounted transversely behind the engineer in the front of the car. It was 55 feet long with a sharp ‘wind splitter’ nose and round windows resembling portholes. An identical McKeen car had been delivered to Babcock’s Cuyamaca railroad a month earlier and had debuted by taking a party of dignitaries on a ride over the Cuyamaca line to its end at the Foster station then back and through the city to the La Jolla line and on to La Jolla for lunch. The San Diego Union reported that the car worked in ‘splendid form’ throughout the entire trip and was the forerunner of a large number which would quickly follow since it had been clearly demonstrated that it is most practical (this car, named ‘Cuyamaca’, was recently rediscovered and brought to Ramona where it is being restored).

In a ‘Notice to the Public’ the La Jolla railroad announced that its new Union Pacific Gasoline Motor Car ‘La Jolla’ would begin operating between the ‘central loop’ in San Diego and La Jolla on Monday, April 20, 1908, making three round trips per day. The motor car would depart from the Brewster Hotel, corner of Fourth and C streets downtown, at 8:00 and 10:00 AM and 2:30 PM and return from the Cabrillo Hotel in La Jolla at 9:00 AM and 1:00 and 5:15 PM.

The central loop had been added to the C and Sixth street line, running on F Street from Sixth to Fourth and on Fourth from F to C, where the Brewster Hotel stood at the corner of Fourth and C. From Fourth Street outside the Brewster the motor cars would turn west onto C Street, arriving at the depot at the foot of C five minutes later, then continuing to Pacific Beach and La Jolla. On their return they would turn east from the depot onto C street, then south on Sixth, west on F, and north on Fourth to the Brewster.

In La Jolla the motor cars ran over the Silverado Street loop, east on Silverado to Exchange Place then west on Prospect, stopping in front of the Hotel Cabrillo across from Herschel Avenue. The loops at either end of the motor cars’ runs were necessary because the motor cars were ‘single ended’ and could only be driven in one direction. They did not have a reverse gear but could be backed up if necessary by stopping the engine, adjusting the camshaft and then restarting the engine in reverse.

The railroad’s notice to the public added that the three daily round trips by steam trains from the terminal depots would continue as at present (at the time the railroad’s franchise did not allow steam engines to run over downtown streets). The timetable showed steam trains leaving the La Jolla depot at Silverado Street and Ivanhoe Avenue for the San Diego depot at the foot of C Street at 7:15 and 10:45 AM and 4:15 PM daily (plus 7:15 PM Saturdays) and returning at 9:00 AM and 12:30 and 5:30 PM daily (and 11:15 PM Saturdays). The steam engines could be driven in either direction and at the end of their runs they could uncouple from their trains, pass around them on a second track, couple to the other end of the train and head off in the other direction without turning around.

In December 1908 the railroad announced that due to the great popularity of the La Jolla line since the introduction of the new gasoline motor car it was opening an ‘uptown ticket office’ with a waiting room at the corner of Fourth and C streets, where most passengers boarded the car for its trip to Pacific Beach or La Jolla.

A second McKeen car, said to be capable of faster speeds and of negotiating steeper grades, was received in April 1909. According to the San Diego Union, it was ordered on account of increasing traffic over the line and to prepare for Sunday and summer travel. Both motor cars were painted ‘a rich Tuscan red’ and became known as ‘red devils’, or ‘submarines’ or ‘torpedoes’ because of their porthole-like windows. An ad in the Union advertising ‘Torpedo Flyers’ to La Jolla announced that steam trains would not operate on the La Jolla railway on Sundays. There would be eight gasoline motor cars each way and two of these trips each way (at 9:30 and 11:30 from San Diego and 3:00 and 6:15 from La Jolla) were ‘Flyers’; only 30 minutes between the Brewster Hotel, Fourth and C, and Cabrillo Hotel, La Jolla with no stops en route. The fare was 50 cents round trip.

A year later the timetable still showed four motor cars arriving and departing from Fourth and C daily. Four steam trains arrived and departed from the depot at the foot of C, plus the Saturday night theater train. The steam trains still did not run at all on Sundays, when they were replaced by four additional round trips by motor cars. After June 19, 1910, the steam trains also began departing from Fourth and C with four round trips daily, except Sundays, apparently due to a change in the railway’s franchise agreement. In addition to the steam trains there were five daily round trips by the gasoline cars, plus a late-night run on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and three additional cars on Sundays when the steam trains did not run at all. In June 1912 the timetable was expanded to ten departures daily and Sundays, plus the late train on Saturday nights. Four of the trains were steam trains (three on Sundays) and the others gasoline motor cars. The same schedule with minor variations continued into 1913 and 1914.

The increased traffic on the La Jolla line in these years was due in large part to the growing number of residents served by the line. The 1910 United States census had counted about 1000 residents in Pacific Beach and La Jolla combined, up from about 300 in 1900, and the 1920 census would count about 600 in Pacific Beach and 900 in La Jolla. The railroad encouraged this growth with advertisements in the San Diego Union.

La Jolla was also growing in popularity as a tourist destination, and the railway did its part with advertisements promoting ‘the most beautiful spot in the vicinity of San Diego’.

Although the number of potential passengers kept rising during these years, the number who had the choice of a new and more convenient way to reach the beaches was growing at an even faster pace. The first automobile arrived in San Diego In 1900 and in 1903 there were still only about twenty cars on the streets (including two Cadillac runabouts in Pacific Beach). In 1910 the number of automobile registrations in San Diego was estimated at 750 and by 1915 it had risen to about 3000, about one for every 18 residents. The main highway from San Diego to the north passed through Pacific Beach and La Jolla, paralleling the La Jolla railroad, and by 1919 it would be fully paved. The growing number and improved quality of automobiles accompanied by expansion of the city’s road system eventually made cars the first choice for travel to Pacific Beach and La Jolla. ‘Those who do not go in their own machines can take the 2:30 La Jolla car from Fourth and C streets’ was the advice of the San Diego Floral Association for a tour of the gardens of Miss Kate Sessions in Pacific Beach in 1915. By 1920 more than 12,000 automobiles would be in use by San Diego’s 75,000 residents.

The growing number of automobiles on public streets also presented conflicts with the La Jolla line’s right of way in those streets. In 1913 the La Jolla Chamber of Commerce filed a complaint with the city clerk asking that the railroad be compelled to cease stopping its cars on the street in such a manner as to hold up traffic and make the operation of automobiles dangerous. The operation of automobiles was particularly dangerous at railroad crossings; five people were killed and three injured in 1916 when a Los Angeles – San Diego automobile stage was hit by a northbound La Jolla train at Glendol, where the coast highway on La Jolla Boulevard crossed the tracks and became Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach. That collision was blamed on the undue speed and negligence of the driver of the automobile, who was among the fatalities, but in other cases drivers successfully sued the railway for damages resulting from collisions between cars and trains.

The railway’s acquisition of the McKeen cars in 1908 and 1909 had been an effort to upgrade and modernize its antiquated steam-powered equipment but the gasoline-powered motor cars turned out to be a poor choice for the La Jolla line. As their aerodynamic shape suggested they were designed for speed; they were geared for 90 miles per hour and the first car actually averaged 60 MPH under its own power when delivered to San Diego from Omaha. In San Diego, the cars would be operated at much lower speeds over a rough roadbed with many sharp turns, including miles on city streets (even the non-stop ‘Torpedo Flyers’ took 30 minutes for the 15-mile trip between San Diego and La Jolla, an average of 30 MPH). The La Jolla line also included steep grades, particularly the run from near sea level at the foot of Grand Avenue to over 100 feet at Bird Rock which averaged nearly 2%. The gear ratios were lowered before the cars were put into service but over time the slow speeds, steep grades and frequent starts and stops put excessive strain on their running gear, particularly their clutches. Within two months of the arrival of the first car in 1908 the San Diego Union reported that it was out of commission several days for clutch repairs. According to San Diego railway historian Richard V. Dodge the McKeen cars’ clutches had to be ‘pulled out’ every three weeks.

Ever since the first McKeen car debuted in 1908 the railroad’s time cards had noted which trains were steam trains and which were motor cars. A new time card on August 29, 1914, did not make that distinction and there was no further mention of the cars in the railroad’s time cards or in news stories about the railroad. Richard Dodge explained that the motor cars ‘lasted to about 1914’ and were ‘disposed of about 1916’. The railroad had acquired another steam locomotive about 1912, a 2-4-4 built in 1889 which became L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 4, and it assumed some of the gasoline cars’ former workload. Another steam locomotive, built in 1881 and acquired in 1915, became L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 15 and also saw service on the line. The steam locomotives required maintenance as well but according to R. P. Middlebrook in ‘High Iron to La Jolla’, their crews could often keep them running with simple repairs using the metal from Prince Albert tobacco tins and baling wire.

In November 1916 E. S. Babcock announced that the La Jolla Railway would deploy a new fleet of gasoline motor cars intended to meet jitney bus competition. The new cars would be essentially automobiles designed to run on rails and would be ready within the next few months. The steam trains would not be abandoned but would be run at times of heavy loads.

The new type of gasoline motor car was constructed by the Ort Iron Works in San Diego. It was built on a Mack truck chassis with a coach body and could carry 30 people at a speed of 35 miles per hour, enough to maintain a fast schedule between San Diego and La Jolla. A trial trip of the ‘made in San Diego’ motor car in April 1917 carried a party of businessmen to La Jolla as guests of the Ort Iron Works, an event that was predicted to foreshadow the establishment in San Diego of the car-building industry. The car made the trip to the ‘cave suburb’ in 33 minutes and there was ‘an evident absence of disagreeable vibration from the engine’. It was soon put into service as L.A. & S.D.B. Ry. No. 51. However, the predicted car-building industry was never established and No. 51 was the only gasoline motor car of its type seen in San Diego.

In October 1917 the Saturday night train to La Jolla pulled by engine No. 15 was accidentally switched off the main line onto the ‘wye’ and into the engine house at Rushville Street where it ran into the No. 51 motor car and drove it through the back wall. No passengers were injured but the front of the motor car was crushed and both No. 15 and No. 51 were removed from service for repairs. K. Fritz Schumacher was a Pacific Beach resident who depended on the railway to arrive in San Diego in time for his first class at San Diego High School. He reported that after the incident that sidelined both No. 15 and No. 51, and since engine No. 2 was undergoing a major maintenance operation, the railroad pressed No. 4 into service in spite of its sad state of disrepair and that he was tardy for several days.

The La Jolla line’s route from its San Diego depot to Old Town was east of the Santa Fe tracks, but just north of Old Town it crossed over the Santa Fe tracks and continued across the San Diego River toward Morena on a route west of the Santa Fe. The crossing outside of Old Town was a grade crossing and the Santa Fe had the right of way; the La Jolla train was supposed to stop and proceed only when there was no traffic on the Santa Fe line. On June 30, 1917, engine No. 4 (running backwards) was pulling a combination passenger/express car and an ordinary passenger car southbound to San Diego when it failed to stop at the crossing and was struck by a southbound Santa Fe freight train. Apparently No. 4’s brakes had failed and the crew was unable to bring it to a complete stop before it entered the crossing, but they were credited with stopping it within the crossing so that the Santa Fe engine struck the mostly empty baggage half of the combination car and not the passenger sections or the engine. The only injury was to a girl who was getting off at the upcoming Old Town stop and was standing near the door, but her injury was serious and she ended up losing a leg. The papers pointed out that the accident could have been much worse; one of the boxcars in the Santa Fe train was full of dynamite

In August 1917 the state railroad commission gave the La Jolla railway permission to increase fares and reduce service to three trains in each direction on weekdays and four northbound and five southbound on Sundays. The changes were blamed on increased competition from privately owned automobiles, although jitneys were not considered an active item of competition at that time. The commission also told the railway that some other cheaper method of transportation must be substituted for the steam trains that the line still depended on for much of its service. Engine No. 1, the rebuilt Baldwin dummy that had derailed and turned over killing its crew in 1908 had been scrapped earlier in 1917 but the railway was still using one of the original Baldwin dummies from 1888, rebuilt as a tender engine and numbered No. 2, the ‘Captain Jadwin’, built in 1880 and acquired in 1906 (No. 3), engine No. 4, built in 1889 and acquired about 1912, and No. 15, built in 1881 and acquired in 1915. The equipment roster was further reduced when engine No. 2’s tender derailed and turned over at Bird Rock while pulling a northbound train in reverse with the tender leading. That tender was replaced by the tender from engine No. 3, the ‘Captain Jadwin’, and engine No. 3 was then sold for scrap.

In 1917 the federal government nationalized the railroad industry to ease the congestion and general dysfunction that resulted from numerous competing railroad companies attempting to work together to support the war effort during World War I. To clear the rails for freight service, particularly to ports on the east coast, the United States Railroad Administration required railroads to raise fares and eliminate discounts to discourage passengers and reduce the number of passenger trains. Although the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway attempted to secure exemptions from this policy it was required to cancel round trip fares and increase the one-way fare by 10 percent in July 1918.

Continuing to lose money and with its equipment unreliable and ridership in decline the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway company filed an application with the state railroad commission in September 1918 for permission to discontinue service and dismantle and dispose of its property.  The San Diego Union quoted E. S. Babcock as confirming that he was going to ‘scrap’ the railroad and sell the material to pay the debts of the company: ‘The road has cost me a great amount of money and I can no longer carry the burden’. The Union referred to a summary of the matter issued by the railroad commission in which the railroad stated that notwithstanding good service the traffic had steadily diminished and that this was due in great measure to the advent of the privately-owned automobile and more recently to the operation of a public stage line. The commission added that the railroad and equipment were old and in poor condition.

The railroad commission postponed its decision to allow the people of La Jolla time to formulate a plan for substitute service, with the provision that the La Jolla chamber of commerce would guarantee any deficit in the line’s operation. The plan for substitute service envisioned extending an existing electric line on Mission Boulevard in Mission Beach, the Bay Shore Railroad, from its terminus at Redondo Court to Grand Avenue and from there over the former La Jolla line right of way to La Jolla. The Bay Shore line, completed in 1915, connected with the Point Loma Railroad in Ocean Beach which provided electric service from downtown San Diego.

In December 1918, however, with no funds on hand to pay operating expenses, service was ‘altogether discontinued’ between San Diego and La Jolla. Most of the railroad’s locomotives and rolling stock had been sold for scrap earlier in 1918 and the railroad’s last working locomotive, No. 2, the original Baldwin dummy rebuilt as a tender engine by the Coronado Railroad, had broken down again. According to the report in the San Diego Union, the railway company had hired an auto stage over the last few months whenever the engine broke down but that even that expedient had become financially so burdensome that it had to be discontinued.

The application to discontinue service and dismantle and dispose of property was approved In January 1919 and the dismantling and disposition of the railroad was soon under way. The San Diego Union reported in November 1919 that six hundred tons of steel, part of the equipment of the disbanded La Jolla railroad, would be loaded aboard the steamship Colorado Springs to be shipped to Japan. The last working locomotive, Engine No. 2, was sold to a lumber company in the Los Angeles area.

The proposal to extend the Bay Shore electric line to La Jolla never happened but in 1923 the San Diego Electric Railroad built a new fast streetcar line from downtown to Mission Beach, continuing along Mission Boulevard to Grand and along the La Jolla line right of way as far as Bird Rock. At about Via del Norte the new electric line departed from the original right of way and turned toward the northeast, meeting Fay Avenue and continuing on Fay to a terminal at Prospect Street near to the location of the first La Jolla depot. This line also eventually succumbed to automobile traffic and was abandoned in 1940. By 1949 the entire system of electric railways in and around San Diego was gone.

Automobile traffic has continued to grow and has outpaced the expansion of roads and highways, leading to traffic congestion and gridlock. Additionally, emissions from automobiles, most of which are powered by gasoline engines, have been shown to be a major cause of air pollution and a major contributor to global climate change. A light rail system begun in the 1980s was intended to provide alternatives to automobile traffic in some areas around San Diego. One of these routes, the Orange Line between downtown San Diego and El Cajon, follows the route of the San Diego & Cuyamaca Eastern for much of its distance. The latest addition to this light rail system, opened in 2021, extends the Blue Line from downtown San Diego and Old Town to Pacific Beach and La Jolla, the same destinations reached by the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway and its predecessors. But while the route from Old Town parallels the old La Jolla line along the east side of Mission Bay with stops at Morena and Balboa Avenue the remainder of the route is entirely different, continuing north through Rose Canyon to a terminus near the University of California campus. The  Balboa stop is miles from the beach at the eastern edge of the Pacific Beach and the university area is even further from Prospect and Silverado streets and the caves of La Jolla. The rail line that actually did ‘reach the beaches’ has been gone for over a century and is only remembered by the unusual width and alignment of certain streets that were once its right of way.

Pacific Beach grew dramatically during the twentieth century and nowhere was that growth more apparent than along Garnet Avenue, the community’s main street. Development had taken off during the war years of the 1940s and by the late 1950s Garnet was lined with commercial establishments ranging from shops, bars and gas stations to supermarkets, department stores and banks. These establishments identified themselves and advertised their businesses with signs, some painted on the sides of buildings but others mounted on roofs or projecting over sidewalks and other public property, many of them illuminated at night. The increasing number, size and brightness of signs had an increasingly negative effect on the community’s aesthetics, eventually generating resistance among residents.

The Pacific Plaza Shopping Center was built in 1960 on the former campus of Brown Military Academy on the north side of Garnet between Jewell and Lamont streets. One of the outlets in the center was a J. J. Newberry junior department store which was crowned with a large three-faced sign featuring the Newberry logo on a white background which was brilliantly illuminated at night. The store opened in February 1961 and the sign immediately provoked outrage among nearby residents. Within a month a petition signed by 173 Pacific Beach residents was submitted to the city council protesting its brilliance, which one councilman agreed was the brightest he had seen anywhere (my home at the time was a block away, facing the sign, and was among those most affected). However, the city planning director informed the council that the city had no control over signs in commercial zones. He said he would study the factors involved in the brilliance of a sign and report to the council, perhaps with a recommendation for some type of control. For its part, J. J. Newberry apparently recognized the negative public relations impact of its sign and the white background was soon turned off, leaving only the blue logo to be seen at night (which was still very large and offensive to nearby residents).

The Newberry sign was a particularly glaring example but sign pollution continued to blight Garnet Avenue and other commercial districts in San Diego for years, generating periodic complaints from citizen’s groups and occasional action by the city. After the Clairemont Town Council complained about ‘sign clutter’ and ‘visual pollution’ on a section of Morena Boulevard the San Diego City Council voted in 1971 to impose restrictions on the height and size of signs in that area. The San Diego Union noted at the time that similar zoning rules had been in effect in La Jolla for years. The Clairemont council had also called for a citywide sign ordinance and in 1973 the San Diego City Council did adopt an ordinance to regulate the number, size and other characteristics of what were called ‘on-premises signs’ in all commercial and industrial zones.

The 1973 ordinance established the legal framework for the regulation of on-premises signs. It presented a set of standards and controls designed to ‘optimize communication between the citizen and his environment’, to facilitate the ‘protection not only of the public, but the aesthetic character of the City’, and to ‘ensure the availability to the business community of adequate quality on-premises signs’. The ordinance imposed limits on the number and size of signs and required all signs to have a city permit. New or modified signs would need a building permit conforming to the new requirements; existing signs which already met the requirements could obtain a use permit. Signs that did not conform to the new requirements would be declared ‘public nuisances’ and abated ‘as prescribed by law’. Importantly, a fee based on the area of the sign would be assessed for each permit, and permits had to be renewed, and an additional fee paid, every two years.

The ordinance specified that a business having frontage on a public right-of-way of 250 feet or less would be entitled to one freestanding ground sign. The height and permitted area of ground signs would depend on the right-of-way’s width and the traffic speed allowed (although on Garnet Avenue most buildings extended all the way to their property line at the public sidewalk, leaving no space for a ground sign). Signs would be allowed on the walls of buildings visible from a public right-of-way but the permitted area of wall signs depended on the length of frontage on the right-of-way and the right-of-way’s width, and also on whether or not the premise had other ground, roof or projecting signs. Roof signs were permitted instead of, but not in addition to, ground or projecting signs if no reasonable alternative sign location existed. If permitted, roof signs would also be limited in height and area depending on the width and traffic speed of the adjoining public right-of-way. Any one premise with frontage on a public right-of-way would be permitted one projecting sign along that right-of-way instead of, but not in addition to, a ground and roof sign. The area of the projecting sign would depend on the width and traffic speed of the public right-of-way and also the frontage of the premise on that right-of-way. The maximum projection over the public right-of-way was also limited to no more than five feet or two-thirds of the width of the sidewalk, whichever was less. About 21,000 sign owners were expected to require permits for about 42,000 signs throughout San Diego.

The council passed the sign ordinance in April 1973 but it faced resistance from business owners opposed to the new regulations, and especially to the fees. According to the San Diego Union some merchants ‘lit up’ with ‘neon-like indignation’ when they learned what their fees would be and pledged to work for the recall of councilmen who voted for the sign law. For example, the Union noted that Pacific Honda at 1277 Garnet Ave. was billed $3,139 for two signs. The United Business Commission filed suit and enforcement of the ordinance was delayed for several years until an appellate court ruled that the sign fee was a ‘valid exercise of the city’s police power’ in March 1979. The city council also compromised with the business group by amending the ordinance to reduce fees for permit renewal and to allow non-conforming signs to remain until 1980.

Apparently some combination of the restrictions and fees on signs, and perhaps increased community resistance to sign pollution, have had an effect and in the decades after the 1970s the aesthetics of the city’s commercial districts have improved considerably, particularly along Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach.

 

Pacific Beach was expected to be an academic community when it was founded in 1887. A four-block campus in the center of the community, now the site of the Pacific Plaza shopping center, was set aside and granted to the San Diego College of Letters. The college opened in September 1888 and in its first year enrolled over 100 students. Collegiate students had to be at least 14 years old and meet stringent requirements for admission, particularly proficiency in Latin, but the college also included a preparatory course for younger students or students not meeting the admission requirements. The students were both male and female, some as young as 8. The college did attract residents to the new community. According to the 1889 San Diego city directory, 13 of the 37 residents listed for Pacific Beach were associated with the college. The college directory showed that about a quarter of the students were Pacific Beach residents, many of them the children or relatives of faculty members.

However the College of Letters closed after two years, and many in the college community moved away. Some of the faculty went on to careers in the San Diego school district. Harr Wagner, a professor and one of the founders of the college, became superintendent of schools in 1891 and F. P. Davidson, another college founder and professor, was principal at the Russ high school downtown from 1890 until he resigned to become superintendent of schools in 1898. Other college faculty and a number of former students became teachers in the school system. With the college no longer an option, Pacific Beach children of high school age could attend the Russ school, taking the train downtown from a station at Grand Avenue and Lamont Street. Grade school children attended school at a one-room public schoolhouse built in 1888 at the northeast corner of Hornblend and Everts streets (now a parking lot behind Crunch Fitness). In 1892 there were 22 students at the Pacific Beach schoolhouse and their teacher was Miss Eliza Lundegreen.

After the college closed the principal economic activity in Pacific Beach became lemon ranching. Most of the ranches were concentrated in the area around the college campus, the social and business center of the community. The former college buildings were used for community meetings and dances, and stores, businesses, the station and the Presbyterian church were all just a few blocks away. In 1895 Pacific Beach residents petitioned the school board to also move the school to this more central location. A site was acquired on Garnet Avenue west of Jewell Street and the church, and the schoolhouse was moved there in 1896. The Pacific Beach schoolhouse was still just one room with one teacher, who taught all grades. In 1898 the teacher was Miss Lu Jennings, who received a salary of $72.50 per month. In 1901 Miss Jennings transferred to the University Heights school and Miss Edith Phillips was appointed to the Pacific Beach school. The fact that these teachers were all ‘misses’ was no coincidence; it was the stated policy of the school district to only hire unmarried women, apparently because wives were assumed to be provided for by their husbands. A meeting of the board in 1902 adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, that no married woman shall be employed as a teacher of the public schools of San Diego unless it shall be proved to the satisfaction of the board that said teacher is the support of the family, or that other good and sufficient reason exists that in the judgement of the board makes such an appointment advisable.

At the turn of the twentieth century Pacific Beach was still a lightly populated agricultural community and in 1902 only 25 students were attending the Pacific Beach school. However, lemon ranching was in decline and in 1903 most of the property in Pacific Beach was purchased by Folsom Bros. Co., real estate operators who believed that the future of Pacific Beach was in residential development. Folsom Bros. began a campaign of civic improvements, grading, ‘curbing’ and ‘sidewalking’ streets to make the area more attractive to homebuyers. Lots were sold, houses were built, and families moved in, and by 1906 attendance at the Pacific Beach school had increased to 40. A principal who also taught 5^th and 6^th grade was added to the faculty, but residents complained that crowding two teachers and all grades and classes into one small room was unfair to teachers, scholars and parents. In the summer of 1906 a large south wing containing two rooms was added to the original schoolhouse and finished ‘with paint outside and plaster within’. The San Diego Union reported that the enlarged schoolhouse would accommodate 150 children and was an improvement long needed by the rapidly increasing population. The improvements were none too soon; by 1907 attendance had increased to 50 pupils. However, attendance at the Pacific Beach school actually went down at the beginning of the 1908 school year. The Union speculated that the less-than-expected attendance was because the ‘vaccination question’ had not been settled; some parents would not send their children to public schools if vaccination was required and were waiting to find out.

In 1903 Folsom Bros. Co. also acquired the college campus property and after renovating the former college buildings opened as the Hotel Balboa in 1905. However the hotel was also unsuccessful and in 1910 Folsom Bros. leased the property to Capt. Thomas A. Davis, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, who founded a military academy on the site, initially with 13 cadets and himself as the only instructor. The San Diego Army and Navy Academy was only for ‘manly boys’ and originally included only grade school subjects, but within two years enrollment had increased to over 70, the faculty had grown to 6 and the curriculum extended to high school subjects. By 1918 the academy had continued to grow and was recognized as ‘by far the liveliest institution of the community, and at the same time Pacific Beach’s most substantial asset’, according to the Union. Although some local boys attended the academy, most of the cadets were from elsewhere and boarded in wooden cottages built on the campus. In 1921 Capt. Davis attempted to move the academy to Point Loma, adjacent to the new Navy and Marine Corps training centers, but when this effort failed he purchased the college campus property that he had been leasing and beginning in 1923 also acquired most of the two blocks on the north side of the campus and the two blocks on the west side.

The surrounding community had also been growing, partly due to the academy’s positive economic impact, and although some local boys attended the academy the public school became increasingly crowded; attendance for the 1922 school year was 116 students. The school district had purchased the block between Emerald, Diamond, Ingraham and Haines streets, a few blocks from the existing school, in 1921, and in 1922 announced plans for a new school on the site. A school building with six classrooms and an auditorium was built on the north side of Emerald Street, just west of Ingraham Street in time for the 1923 school year. Five teachers were assigned to the new Pacific Beach school; a principal, who also taught 7^th and 8^th grades, and teachers for 5^th and 6^th, 3^rd and 4^th, 2^nd and 1^st grade. The original schoolhouse, which had stood next to the Presbyterian Church from 1896 to 1923, was moved to the campus of the Army and Navy Academy where it was enlarged and turned into the academy’s junior school.

Paving of the coast highway through Pacific Beach along Garnet Avenue and Cass Street in 1919, completion of a fast electric streetcar line between downtown and La Jolla on Mission Boulevard in 1924 and a new entertainment and business district around Crystal Pier in 1926 contributed to a growth in the population of Pacific Beach during the 1920s, and a corresponding increase in the number of school-age students. Faced with another shortage of classrooms the school board in 1928 purchased a 9-acre site west of Fanuel between Turquoise and Tourmaline streets. The board announced that it would begin construction of a junior high school on the site as soon as the ‘estimated and probable’ enrollment reached 200 pupils, although they expected that total enrollment in September 1930 would be only 176. At a board meeting in April 1930 40 Pacific Beach residents led by Neil Nettleship, promoter of Crystal Pier, appeared at a board meeting and presented a list of 209 children who they said would be eligible to attend the school by the next February. The board was apparently persuaded and in May voted to advertise for bids for the construction of a $55,000 junior high school.

The Pacific Beach junior high school opened on February 1, 1931 with Dr. J. R. Nichols, who had been vice principal of the La Jolla junior and senior high school, as principal. Two months later Dr. Nichols was suspended without pay for three days as penalty for ‘boxing the ears’ of a student on the school grounds. The board of education noted that corporal punishment was not itself contrary to board rules but that Dr. Nichols had ‘acted in haste and without due regard to controlled action’. Apologies all around had satisfactorily concluded the incident.

Consolidated Aircraft moved to San Diego in 1935 and in the runup to World War II established a complex of manufacturing plants near the San Diego airport to build military aircraft. Tens of thousands of people moved to San Diego to work in these plants, creating a serious housing shortage. In 1941 the federal government acquired a number of tracts within commuting distance of the plants for temporary housing projects, including one in the eastern part of Pacific Beach. The Bayview Terrace project included over 1000 ‘demountable’ plywood homes and other facilities, including an elementary school. The Bayview Terrace elementary school opened in April 1942 with 270 students, who had previously been attending the Pacific Beach elementary school under crowded conditions that required double sessions. The school was built and owned by the federal government but leased to the city board of education and operated as a public school. The temporary homes for defense workers were removed in the 1950s and replaced by homes for military families, now the Admiral Hartman Community. The Bayview Terrace school, also built of plywood, was condemned by the fire department and rebuilt in the 1950s.

The number of defense workers in San Diego continued to grow during the war and the buildup of military forces in the San Diego area further contributed to population growth. Pacific Beach was a short distance from the aircraft plants and military facilities around San Diego Bay and had an abundance of vacant land, much of it already improved with paved streets and sidewalks and utilities like water and gas. The federal government added two more temporary housing projects in Pacific Beach during the war. Los Altos Terrace, with 428 housing units, was built in 1942 on the blocks surrounding the junior high school on Tourmaline Street, and the Cyane project, with 232 units, was built in 1944 in Fortuna Park between Pacific Beach Drive and Crown Point. Commercial developers also stepped in to meet the increasing demand for housing, particularly in improved subdivisions like Crown Point, North Shore Highlands and Braemar. But although these housing developments led to a huge increase in the population of Pacific Beach, including school-age children, wartime budget restrictions did not allow for further expansion of the school system.

The war ended in 1945 and in 1946 one of the first new schools to be authorized in San Diego was an elementary school in southern Pacific Beach, near the hundreds of new homes of the Cyane housing project and the Crown Point subdivision. A four-block area between Pacific Beach Drive, Fortuna Avenue and Ingraham and Jewell streets was purchased for $36,000 and Crown Point Elementary school opened for 525 boys and girls in January 1948. The San Diego Union reported that San Diego’s first post-war school relieved serious overcrowding at Pacific Beach Elementary, but that increased school enrollment in the area had already outstripped its facilities and two grades destined for Crown Point would remain at the Pacific Beach elementary school. Within a month of its opening the board of education approved an addition to the new school, practically doubling its size, and predicted that another elementary school would soon be needed for the Pacific Beach area if school enrollment there kept expanding. 1948 was also the year when St. Brigid Church and Academy was dedicated. A generation of Catholic children attended this private school on Cass and Diamond streets before it closed in 1971.

Over the summer of 1950 the school district accommodated the growing school-aged population in Pacific Beach by adding classrooms and other facilities, and by switching the functions of the existing Pacific Beach elementary and junior high schools. The campus of what had been the elementary school was doubled in size with the acquisition of the block between Emerald and Felspar streets west of Ingraham (and the closing of Emerald in that block). A new physical education building, assembly/cafeteria building and additional classrooms were built for what would become the junior high school there. An assembly/cafeteria building was also added to the former junior high school, which was then reopened as the elementary school. The board explained that placing a larger junior high school near the center of the community and smaller elementary schools in more outlying areas was in line with ‘up-to-date planning’ in which elementary schools serve a smaller section of the community so younger children will not have so far to walk or ride to school. In fact most children from the Los Altos Terrace project would only have to walk a block or two to the elementary school and children from North Shore Highlands only a few blocks further.

The population of Pacific Beach continued to grow in the 1950s and another school in the southwestern part of Pacific Beach was opened in 1953 on the site of a former trailer park on Cass Street between Thomas and Reed avenues and next to the Braemar subdivision. Martha Farnum Elementary was built for $337,450, financed by the federal government under the ‘defense impact area’ program, and initially served 400 students. The school was named for the first woman to hold a top administrative position in the San Diego school district. Martha Farnum had been the assistant superintendent in charge of elementary education and when she died the year before, while still in her 40s, the school board announced that a school would be named in her honor. 1953 was also the year that a new high school was opened south of Grand Avenue and west of Rose Creek, built on fill dredged from Mission Bay while transforming the natural marshland in the northwest corner of the bay into De Anza Cove and Point. Mission Bay High School also benefitted from federal ‘defense impact area’ funds.

In 1956 the last new public school to be built in Pacific Beach opened at the northeastern corner of the community, on Beryl Street north of Noyes Street. The site was then undeveloped land at the base of the Mt. Soledad foothills and there was nothing but more undeveloped land north or east of the school. Kate Sessions Elementary was named for horticulturist Kate Sessions, best known as the ‘mother of Balboa Park’, who had established a nursery operation and made her home in Pacific Beach not far from where the school was built. 499 students were present when it opened (including me).

While population growth in Pacific Beach had spurred construction of public schools, it had a negative impact on the military academy. In the late 1920s a number of large reinforced-concrete dormitories had been built to accommodate a corps of cadets that had grown to over 400, but the depression of the 1930s had reduced enrollment and, unable to repay the building costs, the San Diego Army and Navy Academy was sold to John Brown College in 1937 and renamed Brown Military Academy. In the 1950s the Brown organization announced that the academy was increasingly being ‘hemmed in’ by the community’s growth and ‘retention of the campus for school purposes would not be wise financially in view of land’s increased commercial value’. The campus was sold for over a million dollars to an investment company and Brown Military Academy relocated to Glendora. Most of the academy buildings, including the original College of Letters buildings, were demolished and the Pacific Plaza shopping center built on the site. The concrete dormitories remained standing, abandoned and heavily vandalized, until they were torn down in 1965.

The population of Pacific Beach continued to grow as single-family homes gave way to multi-unit condominiums and apartments and as residential developments moved into previously undeveloped areas such as the Mt. Soledad foothills. However, many of the new residents were college students or young adults without children and school attendance actually went down. At the same time, newer communities like Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch were being developed and attracting families with school-age children. The school board decided to close one of the under-utilized schools in the southern part of Pacific Beach and lease the property to fund school construction elsewhere. Since the Crown Point school had a larger campus and could better accommodate future expansion if needed, the board decided to close the Martha Farnum school in 1983. The school was razed and is now the site of the Earl and Birdie Taylor – Pacific Beach Branch Library. Other Pacific Beach schools have remained but many of their students come from outside the community. Since 2008 the Crown Point school, now known as Crown Point Junior Music Academy, has attracted students through a music magnet program. The Bayview Terrace school was converted to a Mandarin language magnet school in 2013 and is now called Barnard Elementary. Mission Bay High School also responded to declining enrollment by busing students in from other areas.

No new schools have been built in Pacific Beach for over 60 years, but existing schools have undergone additions, reconstruction and upgrades. The school building originally constructed in 1923 as the elementary school and switched to a junior high school in 1950 did not meet state earthquake safety standards and was reconstructed in 1976. And the campus, now Pacific Beach Middle School, is currently (2020) in the midst of a ‘whole site modernization’ project in which the two-story classroom buildings built in 1950 are being torn down and replaced.

Pacific Beach lies on a coastal plain at the foot of Mount Soledad, which rises toward a summit north of the community. The area receives an average of about ten inches of rain a year, most of it coming during winter storms that can drop a large volume of water in a short period of time. In its natural state, even heavy rainfall was absorbed in the relatively flat plains region, although the extreme southwest corner along the shore of Mission Bay is barely above sea level and drains very slowly. In this area, where the Catamaran Resort is now, rainwater remained at or near the surface and an early settler developed a spring to water a flock of sheep. There are also other locations where natural ‘sinks’ or depressions in the otherwise level plain could collect rainwater and become seasonal ponds or marshes. Rain falling on Mount Soledad ran off into canyons: Tourmaline Canyon, near the northwest corner of the community, runs into the ocean and the canyon now followed by Soledad Mountain Road drains into Rose Creek and then Mission Bay, but Bone Canyon, above Vickie Drive, and the canyon between Kate Sessions Park and Kate Sessions school, above lower Academy Street, both empty into areas that have become populated.

In the first decades after its founding in 1887 Pacific Beach was a rural community covered with fields and orchards that largely benefited from the winter rains. The San Diego Union reported in February 1903 that ‘the glorious rains have put everything in the best of shape: the hay fields are looking fine, and the orchards have had a soaking way down deep’. As time went on houses and roads replaced hay fields and orchards, and for these new uses of the land glorious rains could instead leave things in worse shape. In 1901 Fred T. Scripps built a palatial home on the shoreline of Mission Bay in the same low area where the sheep herder had his spring. In January 1916 a series of winter storms that caused devastating floods all over southern California also drenched Pacific Beach. The Union reported that Scripps’ home was practically surrounded by water left by the storm and city employees were sent out to help drain the pool.

The canyon above today’s Academy Street once sustained a seasonal stream that in winter months flowed south along what became Noyes Street toward Mission Bay. In 1900 the Evening Tribune described the area along Noyes between Diamond Street and Garnet Avenue as ‘rich bottom land’ and reported that a local farmer was setting out 4000 strawberry plants. But in 1926, after houses had replaced strawberries along Garnet, property owners petitioned the city council to take some action to prevent water draining down Noyes from forming a ‘small lake’ at the intersection of Noyes and Garnet. They suggested that a closed conduit be constructed along Noyes to care for the flood waters. The Manager of Operation recommended that the City Engineer be instructed to prepare plans for paving Noyes between Garnet and Diamond to take care of the storm waters. Neither of these ideas was implemented at the time.

The war effort of the 1940s led to enormous growth in the population of Pacific Beach, accompanied by increased homebuilding and street improvement, some of which took place in areas prone to flooding. The area around Thomas and Reed avenues between Ingraham and Jewell streets is in one of the natural depressions which earlier owners had drained by digging a ditch westward across Ingraham. The ditch interfered with development of nearby property and in 1941 the city council awarded a contract for what was apparently the first underground storm drain in Pacific Beach, under Reed Avenue between Ingraham and Haines streets. The ditch was then filled in and by 1950 these blocks were lined with houses. This storm drain was later extended to Mission Bay at the foot of Fanuel Street and up Ingraham to Garnet Avenue.

A storm drain also made development possible in a section of northwest Pacific Beach, near where Tourmaline Canyon enters the ocean. The original railroad line between Pacific Beach and La Jolla had crossed this canyon over a bridge but when the line was upgraded to a fast streetcar line in the 1920s the bridge was replaced by a solid dirt embankment over a concrete culvert. The canyon originally continued east for another block or so, between the embankment, now La Jolla Boulevard, and Turquoise Street, but in 1952 the city laid a storm drain in this section of the canyon and in the years since it has been filled in. In its place is a row of houses and the Barrier Reef condominiums along a new block of Sapphire Street.

As streets were paved and houses built on formerly absorptive land, stormwater runoff became an increasing problem in Pacific Beach, particularly in the ‘rich bottom land’ in the vicinity of Noyes Street. In 1953 the city council came up with a plan for a storm drain system that would empty into Mission Bay at the foot of Olney Street. The drain would run under Olney between the bay and Grand Avenue and under Grand between Olney and Kendall street. A branch would run under Noyes Street between Grand and Diamond Street and from there one branch would run west to Lamont and another would run north to Academy Street and under Academy to Beryl. Half of this project was to be funded by the city under a 1952 storm drain bond issue, but half was to be funded by the owners of over 1000 lots in an assessment district bordering the route of the proposed drain.

When the council met to consider this storm drain project a large group of property owners appeared to protest the project. Most of the complaints were about the boundaries of the assessment district, with owners of property at higher levels complaining that only the owners lower down whose property was affected by stormwater would see any benefit from their assessment payments. Other protesters contended that underground storm drains were not needed at all. Richmond Jackson, who owned a home on Noyes overlooking Academy Street, suggested that the drainage problem could be solved with settling basins, which could also be used for fishing. Any runoff could be contained in surface drains within paved streets. Academy Street, below his house, had been paved a few years earlier and Jackson claimed that it had been successful at draining stormwater in that area. Faced with a survey indicating that 90% of affected property owners opposed it, the council abandoned this ambitious storm drain project in March 1954. Instead the city used its own funds to build a storm drain on Grand Avenue and Olney Street draining into Mission Bay. The city also acquired easements and built a storm drain under two blocks between Morrell and Noyes streets and Grand and Reed avenues, a particularly low area in these ‘bottom lands’ with a history of flooding, and connected it to the Olney drain.

In 1955 a city council proposal to pave and otherwise improve Noyes from Reed to Beryl streets included construction of a storm drain between Grand Avenue and Diamond Street. Again there were protests; the people below wanted the drain, the people above did not. However, this time the council overruled the protests and the street improvements, including the storm drain, were made in 1956. In the years since, as development continued in the foothills above Pacific Beach, this storm drain has been extended up Academy Street and Edgeworth Road to beyond Kate Sessions Park, effectively solving the drainage problems originating from this canyon.

Increased runoff due to development also increased the drainage problems in the low-lying areas of southwestern Pacific Beach, periodically flooding the area around Mission Boulevard and Pacific Beach Drive. In 1953 the existing sewage pumping station there was upgraded to also handle storm water. After a major storm in January 1964 flooded the area once again, city manager Tom Fletcher told the San Diego Union that ‘ponding’ began at the Mission Boulevard-Pacific Beach Drive intersection after storms of any magnitude, and spread to Oliver Avenue, which is about the same elevation. When the ponding reached a depth of about two feet excess water also ran south on Mission Boulevard, placing a load on the drains there. However, he announced that a project included in the city’s capital outlay program for the year would double the capacity of the drainage system. This storm drain project ran up Dawes Street from Mission Bay and along Grand, Fanuel and Felspar as far as the corner of Gresham and Emerald streets. Over the next few years storm drains were also added under Missouri, Loring and Sapphire streets, leading to the ocean.

Pacific Beach has continued to grow, and storm drains along Soledad Mountain Road and Vickie Drive were among those added to handle increased runoff as development expanded onto Mount Soledad. In addition to mitigating flooding, some of these large concrete tubes turned out to have other unanticipated uses, at least during the dry season. Members of a Facebook group for Pacific Beach old-timers responded to the question ‘Who explored the underground storm drains of PB?’ with claims to have not only explored but to have ridden skateboards and Flexies, some with flashlights taped on them for headlights, through the drains. Some recalled riding from the end of Vickie Drive to Tourmaline Beach or skateboarding to Mission Bay. In the wet season, though, the storm drain system is meant to keep Pacific Beach dry and it has generally been effective, although storms of any magnitude still cause ponding in the area where sheep once drank from natural springs and city workers had to bail out Fred Scripps’ home.