It’s hard to imagine that a sunken stone grotto garden located between the Rueben E. Fleet Space Theater and the Historical Society building was once a nudist colony.
With worldwide attention, visitors to the 1935-36 California-Pacific Exposition paid 25 cents to get a distant glimpse of the free spirits of nature through knotholes in a fence.
The San Diego Historical Society chronicles some of the two-year highlights that evoked protests, curiosity, joiners and “resident” complaints.
As a preteen, I remember attending the fair and watching people lined along the stairway for a better look through the peepholes.
Inhabitants there now are monarch, sulfur and swallowtail butterflies who nourish on the nectar plants, surrounded by majestic ficus trees.
An old fellow named Adolph, attired only in long hair and a beard, helped in the 1930s construction of a stage and undressing room. He was King Adolph of the Nudists.
The Zorine Queen complained about the sun, explaining it wasn’t as sunny at the World’s Fair in Chicago, where she claims to have been inside a theater or inside a jail. She was adamant in declaring she wouldn’t wear “burlesque bits” of clothing. “I am a nudist,” she said.
Amid later eternal strife, Zorine left the colony with the intention of opening a nudist capital of the world near San Diego after a country tour to preach nudity to the clothes-bound masses. Ruth Cubitt from Mission Hills was her successor.
District Attorney Thomas Whalen approved the nudist show after making a personal inspection.
Surprisingly, one of the first complaints came from California’s amateur nudists, charging the Zoro Gardens colony with fraud. King Adolph roared back: “They’re Sunday nudists.”
The San Diego Council of Catholic Women and the Women’s Civic Center protested plans to reopen the colony for the 1936 Exposition, calling it “a repetition of offenses against decency,” but the City Council OK’d a second season.
However, in announcing that there would be no “indecent” shows at the exposition, the city manager said the nudist colony would now consist of a play of lights on beautiful figures.
Still, a lady known as Gold Gulch Gertie ventured out and, clad only in a smile, rode through Gold Gulch on a burro, imitating Lady Godiva. She was arrested, later acquitted and rode again under police supervision.
The lineup of nudists in 1936 included muscle-bound physical director George Barr; Prince Arlo, an archery enthusiast; and Lucille, who had posed as Mona Lisa in Chicago.
The colony closed a few days before the fair’s end after an argument with exposition officials about finances.