LA JOLLA AREA GETS PUSH FOR NATIONAL REGISTER

State panel backs local plan to list 8 acres as historic

After five years of effort, the newly designated La Jolla Park Coastal Historic District is being nominated for the National Register of Historic Places following a vote of support last week from the California State Historical Resources Commission.

Meeting in Sacramento, commissioners unanimously supported a proposal to list as a historic district 8 acres of coastal parkland between Torrey Pines Road and Coast Walk in the north and nearly the end of Coast Boulevard in the south.

The La Jolla Park Coastal Historic District, proposed by locals led by Seonaid McArthur, chairwoman of the La Jolla Historical Society’s Landmark Committee, encompasses places such as The Cove, Children’s Pool, Casa de Mañana retirement community and Red Roost and Red Rest cottages.

The area is based on an 1887 map of what was called La Jolla Park.

Commission staff said 36 letters of support were submitted. While many speakers at the meeting favored the designation, the issue for opponents was the potential impact on local marine life and their existing protections. The Children’s Pool is closed to the public for five months every year for harbor seal pupping season. Point La Jolla is closed for six months annually for sea lion pupping season, and a year-round closure is being proposed. Both of those sites are included in the nomination.

One of the speakers supporting the nomination was author Molly McClain, an authority on La Jolla philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, the namesake of Scripps Park who contributed funds to establish some of the landmarks in the proposed historic district, including the Children’s Pool.

McClain told the commission that La Jolla’s founders “prioritized direct access to nature and ensured that La Jolla’s coastline would be preserved for public use. Health-seeking and nature-loving became part of a way of life that we now call the California lifestyle.”

McArthur added that “developers prioritized access to the sea. Almost the whole coastline of the La Jolla Park subdivision is set back by the presence of Coast Boulevard and the (Coast Walk) Trail … where