Old Scripps Pier Will Soon Be Headed for Davey Jones’ Locker

LA JOLLA —  It’s weather-beaten and rickety, laden with gull droppings and perched on a set of wobbly pilings that look ready to crumble. But the Scripps Pier--a La Jolla landmark since 1916--is a structure rich with lore.

Take, for instance, the pier’s little-known contribution to America’s victory in World War II. In 1941, a Scripps researcher spent many long nights on the pier, monitoring underwater animal sounds between naps on a cot.

His discovery that the symphony emitted by snapping shrimp drowned out all other ocean noises proved invaluable to the U.S. military. Henceforth, the Navy took pains to steer its submarines through waters thick with colonies of the crustacean, exploiting its noisy habits to conceal the craft from Japanese sonar.

The 1,018-foot pier has served more whimsical purposes as well. Graduate students hold parties on the structure to usher in each new school year, and in eras past, some half-starved young researchers found their evening meal at the end of the pier, hunting the pigeons that roost in the web of beams beneath its deck.

Several particularly devout Scrippsians have even gone so far as to march down the pier’s planks, wedding party in tow, to exchange vows as the surf crashed below and gulls flapped overhead.

But before too long, the set of timbers and pilings that hold such history will crash into the sea. Late this year, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will begin work on a new pier right alongside the old one, a $3.9-million replica designed to withstand the waves for 100 years. Once the new structure is completed, its predecessor will be demolished.

Officials at Scripps, which uses the pier for research purposes and relies on it to help pump a round-the-clock supply of ocean water to laboratories and the public aquarium, say construction of the new structure is long overdue. Seventy years of flogging by the surf has taken its toll and weakened the structure to a point where it is beyond repair--and ready to surrender to the sea.

“Back in the ‘40s they had some hellacious storms and waves up to 40 feet were hammering that pier,” said Jim Stewart, unofficial pier activity coordinator and chief diving officer at Scripps for more than 25 years. “Then we had the big storms in ‘82-’83, which damaged 11 pilings. They’ve braced the cracked pilings, reinforced it and put all sorts of Band-Aids on it, but there’s not much else we can do.”

In the view of Scripps officials, replacing the pier is urgent, because it supplies the institution with its lifeblood--seawater. About 1.8 million gallons a day is pumped from the ocean to aquarium tanks and research labs via a 1,000-foot-long flume, or channel, that stretches along one side of the pier. If the pier were damaged in a storm, the system could falter and the flow would be interrupted.

“If that happened, we would have large numbers of animals in jeopardy within several hours,” said Tom Collins, assistant director for administration at Scripps. “That water flow is vital to the institution, and with the pier in its present condition, the system cannot be viewed as reliable.”

Indeed, the school has an emergency response team trained to react if the seawater supply is disrupted. Arrange ments have been made to house some of the institution’s animals at Sea World, but if large numbers were threatened, many would have to be released into the ocean.

“That would be devastating because it would interrupt months, even years, of research by faculty and students using controlled groups of species for experiments,” Collins said. “Let me tell you, I don’t sleep well during the winter storm season.”

Construction of the new pier is expected to begin by December and will take about a year. Unlike its predecessor, it will be made entirely of concrete, and will be 65 feet longer and 2 feet wider.

Although it will look much the same, the new pier will provide Scripps scientists with a few advantages. First, the seawater supply channel will be below deck, removing a cumbersome obstacle that renders the left side of the pier useless. That will enhance the pier’s use as a small boat-launching facility, enabling researchers to proceed off the south side if the seas to the north are rough.

Also, the ocean water pumping capacity will increase from about 800 gallons per minute to 1,200 gallons per minute, allowing for increased use by scientists and the growing aquarium.

Finally, the increased length will enable the seawater supply system to draw from greater depths and below the thermocline, a layer of warm water that sits atop the surf during summertime. Colder water is optimal for most experiments, Collins said.

Scripps officials have sought funding to rebuild the pier--the only one on the California coast that is strictly for research--since the early 1970s. But until storm-driven waves in the winter of 1982-83 lashed the pier mercilessly and caused numerous pilings to crack, the institution could not persuade the University of California and state legislators to make the project a priority.

“The pier was still standing,” Collins said, “so they figured we could make do.”

Finally, the UC Regents approved the construction in 1983. Next, state officials had to hammer out a new lease with the City of San Diego. Although the state Legislature granted Scripps title to the water and a portion of the beach in front of the institution in 1929, the city still owns the submerged land on which the pier pilings stand.

Now, Scripps officials are awaiting--and expecting--final state approval of a construction bid for the project by a Utah contractor, Kiewit Pacific Co. If all goes as planned, work should be under way in three months.

The original pier suffered its own share of delays and funding troubles, according to Scripps archives. Financed by Ellen B. Scripps, the legendary benefactress of the institution, the $34,000 project was first held up in 1915 because the wartime economy had made the price of materials prohibitive.

Once prices stabilized, the contractor, Mercereau Bridge & Construction Co. of Los Angeles, faced a new dilemma: how to get the long, heavy timbers to the pier site, 300 feet north of the school’s entrance at the foot of formidable bluffs with limited access.

Ultimately, the builder transported the logs--the finest Oregon pine and Douglas fir available--by train to Del Mar, then floated them down the coast to La Jolla. Draft horses were used to lug the timbers out of the water.

Midway through construction, builders realized they had miscalculated and would have to build a shorter pier in order to keep the project within budget. Miss Scripps stepped in again, agreeing to cover the cost overrun.

Finally, it was completed and dedicated in late 1916. For 25 years thereafter, the pier served not only as a research base but as a public fishing spot, attracting anglers from near and far. In 1941, it was closed to the public “because they were doing war-related research out there,” said Elizabeth Shor, a La Jolla resident who wrote a biography of Scripps.

Apparently, that move sparked considerable resentment among some locals, who had gotten used to thinking of the structure as “their pier.”

“On occasion over the years some old fella would come down with his lifetime pier fishing pass and attempt to drop a line in,” said Chuck Colgan of Scripps’ public affairs office. “They’d just have to explain to him that it’s closed.”

It has never reopened for fishing.

The pier’s research uses vary widely, but its most fundamental value is as a means to collect data beyond the surf line seven days a week, 24 hours a day, Stewart said. Since its construction, it has served as a station for daily monitoring of water temperature and salinity. It also houses the oldest tidal gauge on the West Coast and numerous weather instruments.

Many students rely on the pier for their experiments. One young researcher draped mops off its end to gather crab larvae, which he used to study “wind direction, currents and to find out everything you’d ever want to know about crab larvae,” Stewart recalled.

Another, similar experiment with algae growth is under way, and many years ago a student strung a wire along the pier railing to measure the length of gull legs.

“You never know what you’re going to find going on out there,” Stewart said, adding that the pier’s tip is also a junction for numerous electrical wires servicing offshore experiments.

Aside from science, the pier has hosted parties and weddings and permitted easy access to fish often caught for use by the aquarium. And during winter storms, thrill-seeking students and instructors huddle on the planks to feel it sway with the surf.

Unlike the recent, highly controversial proposal by Scripps to build a new aquarium, the pier project has triggered virtually no opposition from the community. Both the La Jolla Town Council and the La Jolla Shores Assn., a neighborhood group, approved the reconstruction with little ado.

David Ish, executive manager of the Town Council, said that organization felt the project was “completely justified” and had only one request, concerning the flow of surplus and used water from the campus across the beach near the pier. After water has passed through the aquarium and various research tanks, it flows through a drain system and pours out half a dozen pipes across the beach.

“There’s a pretty good quantity of water rushing across there,” Ish said. “It’s about 75 yards of sand and we would like them to pipe the water past the end of the pier so the area will be cleaned up, usable beach.”

Collins said the new pier will have an improved pumping system that will eliminate 50% of the water flowing across the sand.

According to author Shor, whose husband has been a professor of geophysics at the institution since 1953, there are a handful of old-timers who feel a tad nostalgic about the imminent passing of the old pier.

“It’s one of the oldest and most visible landmarks La Jolla has, and there are a lot of people who will be a bit sad to see it go,” Shor said. “Some of them have asked whether people could acquire chunks of the planking or piling when they take the old pier down. I think that’s a nice idea.”

Maybe so. But Stewart, a salty character who has probably spent more hours on the pier than anyone, isn’t exactly misty-eyed about losing the historic structure.

“I’ve got one too many splinters in my feet from that old thing,” he said. “I won’t miss it at all.”