La Jolla is part of the City of San Diego. It stretches along the coast from Pacific Beach at the south to Torrey Pines State Park at the north. La Jolla is somewhat isolated from Interstate 5 and the rest of San Diego by the Mount Soledad ridge. We have a benign climate, clean air, and some of the feel of a small town; also increasing traffic, high rents and home prices, overdevelopment. Along our shoreline there are rocky headlands separated by coves and uncrowded sand beaches. The ocean water is cool to cold most of the year. There are few bugs. We have clouds but little rain. The humidity is not high. The air temperature is almost always in the comfort zone. La Jolla is an internationally known vacation spot. Besides the tourists, we have about 32,000 permanent residents.
La Jolla is well-known for it's surf and prominent role in California surfing history and culture. We boast the famous Windansea Beach and Black's Beach, as well as La Jolla Cove, which offers world-class big-wave surfing on rare occasions. Windansea Beach culture of the 1960's was the subject of Tom Wolfe's novel "The Pumphouse Gang", written in 1968.
La Jolla was first developed in the latter part of the 19th
century. At that time many craftsman style homes and vacation
cottages were built of redwood. Some of these still exist
although many have been moved or demolished to make way for
bigger and not so attractive buildings.
La Jolla is the home of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California San Diego. Both of these large institutions, along with the Salk Institute, Scripps Clinic and many bio tech companies, are in the northeastern part of La Jolla closer to Interstate 5. They do not impact the central La Jolla residential and commercial area as much as one might expect. Actually they ensure that La Jolla has a nice mix of people.
We are open to suggestions for the style and content of this
page. We hope that it will eventually become a source for non-commercial
information regarding La Jolla. It is our intention to provide links to web pages maintained by civic, cultural and educational
organizations. In the future we would like to maintain a calendar
of events and meetings.
