La Jolla is 120 years old this year, specifically this month, when on April 30, 1887, the first lots were sold at a rather awesome event that has gone down in history as “the grand auction.” Property was advertised “as free as air” and available “at your own price” ” which, of course, it wasn’t. The first lot was sold for $1,250, located on Prospect Street at about the spot where the old Cabrillo Hotel stood (now part of La Valencia).
“The grand auction” was the jump-off point of La Jolla history. Before the end of the auction day, $56,000 worth of lots had been sold and pioneer developers Frank Terrell Botsford and George W. Heald were off and running. Homes were built, businesses were established and the community became part of San Diego 1880s boomtown history.
The auction attracted hundreds of potential buyers from far and wide. It was advertised the day before at a minstrel show in downtown San Diego where a performer sang: “Go out to La Jolla’s fair Park; leave your whiskey at home for it isn’t a lark.” They arrived in horses and buggies, surreys and wagons. An auctioneer’s stand was set against the background of the blue Pacific (what is now Scripps Park). Picnic lunches were served. A band paraded. Wendell Easton ” president of the Pacific Coast Land Bureau, which was selling the La Jolla Park subdivision of 300 acres with 25-by-140-foot lots ” made a speech virtually promising the moon, but most importantly water, which had been the major curtailment to any earlier La Jolla development.
“We have developed a magnificent supply of spring water,” Easton heralded, “and the reservoir for the storage is in full view on the hill back of us “¦ The railroad is only one and a half miles from us, and a turnpike road will be constructed at once to it “¦ Telephone connection with the city is being completed.”
Easton made the whole package sound so wonderful that even his auctioneer, Robert Pennell, bought a lot. Unfortunately, not all of what was promised at “the grand auction” was reality. The “magnificent supply of spring water” was only a small artesian well located where Silverado Street and Ivanhoe Avenue come together and a waterworks project the developers proposed to bring a supply over the hill from Rose Canyon. The railroad was really four miles away. And telephone service did not come to La Jolla in actuality for many years.
Nevertheless, “the grand auction,” for all of its hucksterism and boomtown ballyhoo, brought La Jolla to the forefront as a Southern California town with resort potential. By 1888, the $56,000 worth of sales of La Jolla Park subdivision realized the day of the auction was augmented by another $96,000.The railroad did arrive a few years later. A large landmark hotel, seemingly a necessity in every boomtown suburb of the 1880s, was built at Prospect and Girard. Water arrived. And, 120 years later, we are enjoying the bounties of what Easton called on auction day “the natural watering place of this whole southern country” (from which) “nothing can turn the tide.”
” “Reflections” is a monthly column written for the La Jolla Village News by the La Jolla Historical Society’s historian Carol Olten. The Society, dedicated to the preservation of La Jolla heritage, is located at 7846 Eads Ave. and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.