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THE IDEA BEGAN in Pacific Grove but it came to fruition in San
Diego in 1903. Los Angeles made a grab for it, but then decided to build a
breakwater and so lost its bid. The promise of five hundred dollars, an empty
boathouse and a launch brought to San Diego the dream that became the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography.
What a remarkable amalgam were those turn-of-the-century
scientists and San Diegans who began this undertaking: William E. Ritter, Fred
Baker, Edward W. Scripps, Ellen Browning Scripps, Julius Wangenheim, Charles A.
Kofoid, E.S. Babcock, Manuel Cabral, H.P. Wood…. Most of them were
transplanted midwesterners who soon became San Diego boosters.
Fred Baker was the catalyst. Called "Dr. Fred" by his friends, Baker was a
physician who collected seashells very professionally as a hobby. He made a
point of getting acquainted with every biologist who visited San Diego. Among
those were two honeymooners in 1891 who spent a day collecting specimens of a
small rare fish, the blind goby, recently described as being in San Diego
waters. They were William E. Ritter, working on his doctorate from Harvard, and
his wife Mary, a physician. Ritter tried his hand at sailing that
day, inexpertly, and landed them both in the bay; the crew of a dredge rescued
them, even as Ritter was gathering interesting creatures from the dredge
dumpings while his bride clung to the sailboat.1
In 1901 Baker sought out Ritter's colleague, Charles A.
Kofoid, who was collecting marine specimens in the San Diego area, and brought
Kofoid before the businessmen's Tuesday Club to tell of a planned biological
station. In 1902 Baker spent pleasant collecting days with Harry B. Torrey, one
of Ritter's former students. Baker was in fact off and running before Ritter
was even thinking of San Diego as a site for his dream.
Ritter, who in 1903 was a professor of zoology at the
University of California at Berkeley, envisioned a seaside laboratory somewhere
in California that would rival the world's most famous one, the Stazione
Zoologica at Naples. It would have aquarium displays and lectures for the
public, and laboratory space for a permanent staff and visiting scientists. It
would undertake a survey of all the coastal marine life of
the state of California.2
Ritter had, as far back as 1892, led students and colleagues to a summer of
tent-camp collecting at Pacific Grove on the Monterey peninsula. The next year
he had transferred his tents to Santa Catalina Island for a particularly
enjoyable summer session. During the summer of 1895 some of his colleagues had
collected from San Pedro Harbor near Los Angeles, and there Ritter returned with
a group of twenty-five students and associates in 1901. He was a practical
visionary, whose plans for a permanent station were becoming definite, and had
indeed been endorsed in substance by University President Benjamin I. Wheeler.
The Los Angeles area seemed a suitable location, and for the summer of 1901
friends of the university and a few Los Angeles businessmen raised $1,400 for
equipment and laboratory supplies. That carried the small group through the
summer of 1902, but that fall Los Angeles decided to improve and develop its
harbor, thus effectively destroying the best collecting grounds.
San Diego booster Fred Baker had already invited the peripatetic
biologists to his locale for the summer of 1902. Ritter
declined with regret and promised to spend some time in San Diego during his
survey of the marine life of the entire coast.
Baker renewed his invitation in January of 1903: "In any project for a
permanent establishment in Southern California, the splendid bay
at San Diego should not be overlooked…. For such work as you are
planning I feel sure San Diego offers the greatest chances of any point on the
coast…. A prompt answer will greatly oblige me, as I must get to work at once, and I am
a better collector biologically than financially."3
As a member of the Board of Education, Baker had already
obtained a promise of the use of the Roseville school for the summer, and he was
sure that he could raise the few hundred dollars that would be needed for
seawater lines and equipment. He had also stirred the interest of the San Diego
Chamber of Commerce, of which he was a member.
Ritter liked the sound of it. "I fully realize that San Diego
ought to receive more careful consideration…. I am quite disposed to go there
for this coming summer's work." He would need at least five hundred dollars for
laboratory supplies. Furthermore, wouldn't the boathouse at the Coronado Hotel
be a better location? Owner E.S. Babcock had assured University President
Wheeler on a recent visit there that it was available.4
Baker hurried to the Hotel Del Coronado, with the secretary
of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, H.P. Wood. Baker really hoped that the
biologists would locate at the Roseville school on San Diego Bay, not far from
his own house, where he could readily join in the collecting. But he
conscientiously recorded the pros and cons of each site, and acknowledged that
facilities at the hotel and its offer of a launch were more valuable considerations.
Then he asked Ritter to define his summer plans in
detail. "We should be glad to help along a Summer School as much as possible,"
wrote Baker, "but shall have to ask money from men who are interested in San
Diego, but scarcely know what Biology means."5
With five hundred dollars, said Ritter, his group would do
mostly laboratory work, from "shore and pile collecting for our material, with
perhaps some surface skimming." With another five hundred dollars they could
operate a launch, and so take water temperatures, make salinity determinations,
take soundings, and "make quite a test in a qualitative way of the plankton."6
Baker set himself a goal of two thousand dollars and, through
a committee of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, began his financial
collecting. With pledges of about three hundred dollars on hand by March 15, and
in company with H.P. Wood, he "drove out to Miramar, the home of a wealthy
rancher—secured a promise of five hundred dollars—and advice to call on his
sister."7
Thus did newspaper magnate (not rancher) Edward W. Scripps
and Ellen B. Scripps enter the picture. Mr. Scripps, said Baker, "takes no
interest in Biology," but it turned out that he soon would. As for Miss Ellen,
she promised "one hundred dollars, and more if necessary."8
She soon felt that much more was necessary.
Baker lined up one more valuable person, a Roseville
neighbor of his, Manuel Cabral. This Portuguese fisherman, once described by
Ritter as "unusually intelligent and competent,"9 was interested in operating a
schooner with himself at the helm for the six weeks of dredging, trawling, and
plankton collecting.
Some days of negotiating by Wood, Baker, and Babcock led to
the selection of the boathouse of the Hotel Del Coronado. At Baker's urging,
Ritter listed his needs there, for seawater lines, lighting, and other
facilities to make the building a working laboratory. One way or another,
inexpensively, the San Diego supporters arranged for those.
In late June Ritter's group of ten biologists moved into
comfortable, rent-free quarters alongside the prestigious Hotel Del Coronado, as
one more tourist attraction near the popular resort. All expenses were covered
by $1,300 contributed by San Diego businessmen. Manuel Cabral and his helper
brought in a wealth of specimens, many of which proved to be new species, an
indication that previous biological collecting near San Diego had been very incomplete.
The most successful collecting of the summer, however, was of
people: the enthusiasm of Ellen B. Scripps, the partial interest of E.W.
Scripps, and the considerable involvement of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.
While the biologists were at work one day, a group of their local contributors
visited the Coronado boathouse. "My most vivid impression connected with
the visit of this group," wrote Ritter much later, "was of [E.W.
Scripps] this unique person cruising around in the laboratory among the workers,
to see for himself what was going on. This was probably his first sight of
anything like a scientific laboratory. From table to table he went inspecting
whate4ver was visible—not neglecting, I have no doubt, the students themselves,
males and females."10
Soon after that, on August 2, Ritter, and the two Scrippses
held an informal meeting, duly recorded: "Prof. Ritter read a report. After
carefully considering the report it was the unanimous opinion that the plan
outlined in the report was thoroughly practical, the financial requirements
being looked upon as moderate. It was thereupon determined to form an
association to be hereafter named, the object of which would be to promote the
location of a Marine Biological Station in the vicinity of San Diego."11
Ritter returned to his teaching commitments at Berkeley in
August, but he heeded the urgent plea from Baker that he come back to San Diego
briefly for a formal meeting of their supporters: "You must be on hand if you
have to close down the University for a few days."12 Ritter and
Baker had concluded that the most keenly interested contributor would be
Ellen B. Scripps. "I do not believe, however," noted
Ritter, "the idea of making the whole enterprise hers,
so that it might be named after her, has entered seriously into her thoughts as
yet"—which it apparently had into his.
As to E.W. Scripps, wrote Ritter, "I think our policy must be
to go ahead at all times and mark out our line of action, then tell him
afterward, in important matters, what we propose to do. When he approves, he
will, I suspect voluntarily give us a hand."13 Those were shrewd
assessments by Ritter, and they directed his course of action in dealings with
the Scripps family for many years.
During that summer of 1903 E.W. Scripps found the person who
he felt should undertake the business side of the new venture: Homer H. Peters,
a Detroit businessman recently moved to San Diego. On September 16, Baker, with
two others of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce who knew Peters, introduced him
to Scripps. The four drove to Miramar, where the successful newspaper publisher
had built a sprawling house during the 1890s on several hundred acres of a
remote mesa fifteen miles north of San Diego. Peters and Scripps found Detroit
acquaintances in common and quickly "affiliated like two old college mates."
Baker wrote of the day's visit in a burst of enthusiasm to Ritter:
[After lunch and some general conversation, Wood had
brought up the discussion of the planned biological station.] "Mr. Scripps
became the most enthusiastic advocate of the crowd. He said to Mr. Peters,
'Now you must put yourself at the head of this thing and make it go. Some of
us are willing to help, but we want a man of affairs, one who has made a
notorious success in his own business to assure us that no mistakes will be
made, and that it will succeed. Dr. Baker and a lot of professional
men may take hold of this and it will go very slowly indeed, or it won't go at
all, but if business men of ample means take hold it will succeed. You and I
know that the easiest thing in the world is to raise money, but the right men
must go after it. Really we don't have to put up much ourselves—Why! if we
wanted to, we could go into it and make a dividend ourselves. You have been in
business all your life, and broke down. Now you are going to put $200,000, into
a big hotel just because you can't be idle. Now instead of business—make a
variety. Take up this, and put a part of your surplus energy into it. You will
find it more fun than anything else you can do. Be the head of it, and take the
credit for making it a success. I don't like to use so vulgar a word as
advertisement, but it is the biggest opportunity to become known that ever came
to you. Marshall Field got more advertisement out of the Field Museum than out
of any equal money he ever spent. This thing if it is worked right will give you
an international reputation for we are going to make this
the biggest thing of its kind in the world.
" 'Now, I can't take the lead in this thing [continued E.W.
Scripps]. Mr. Marston has gone in to build a great park. We don't expect him
to spend a great deal of his own money, but we know that he will furnish the
business ability, and we feel safe to put our money into it. I am into country
roads—or I might go into this, but I can't, so you have got to do it. We
will make you chairman of the Finance Committee, and you have got to make it
go. Then when you find out what has to be done you can come out here and hold
me up—and we will get the money. It won't take much to begin on. I don't
believe they ought to spend over $2000 in the next six months, nor more than
$15000 in the next two years. If I had a hundred thousand dollars in hand I
wanted to give them, I would not give them over two thousand. I could tell by
the way the spent that, how they deserved the other $98000….
" 'I wouldn't try for a fine building. Any shack will do if
there is room enough, but let's have work. Then, when we have learned by a few
mistakes, we can spread out and make a big thing. This will throw you in with
College people, and they are fine people to meet, and you will get more
satisfaction out of it than from anything you can do.'
"Mr. Peters protested—didn't know anything about Biology,
etc., but finally said he would take any place given him, and do his share,
and would be one of five to insure the success of the thing….
"Mr. Scripps said, 'We aren't too old to learn a good deal
about Biology, and I tell you it is mighty interesting. Of course we couldn't
begin at the bottom and go into details, but we could get a broad insight into
the work.' just before Mr. Peters left us he said, 'Well! I suppose I must
begin reading on Biology.' "14
Two busy weeks followed. A meeting at the office of the San
Diego Chamber of Commerce was set for September 24, to which twenty-seven
leading citizens of San Diego were invited. Eleven of them came, to hear
pro-tem president William E. Ritter describe his dream. They
selected a membership committee which in two days persuaded thirty-four people
to meet again at the Chamber of Commerce office. Moving briskly on September 26,
1903, those civic leaders formed a marine biological association "for the
purpose of securing the foundation and endowment of a scientific institution to
be known as the San Diego Marine Biological Institution."15 They then adopted
the proposed by-laws, and they elected officers: Homer H. Peters, president;
Ellen Scripps, vice-president; Julius Wangenheim, treasurer; Fred Baker,
secretary; W.E. Ritter, scientific director; E. W. Scripps and James MacMullen,
additional members of the board of trustees. The deed was done, and the
organization was soon incorporated.
Many years of effort followed the creation of this infant in
1903. Homer Peters soon moved away from San Diego, leaving the association's
presidency (as E.W. Scripps had feared) in the hands of the enthusiastic Fred
Baker. Ellen B. Scripps in 1906 saved the day by generously promising fifty
thousand dollars to put the organization on a secure footing. Charles A. Kofoid
went off to Europe to visit all the marine stations there, for ideas to
incorporate into California's own. Manuel Cabral continued as an oceanic
collector for several years, inside and outside the bay. La Jollans were drawn
into the project in 1905 when the association selected a site in the city park
at La Jolla Cove. There for five years the scientists occupied a "little green
laboratory," built through local subscription. But E.W. Scripps decided in 1907
that he preferred a generous piece of land at the far end of "Long Beach" (now
La Jolla Shores beach), and he ensured the purchase of those 170 acres from the
city. Julius Wangenheim and Fred Baker worked closely with Ritter on plans for a
permanent station. The first building, George H. Scripps Memorial Laboratory
(named for the deceased older brother of E.W. and Ellen B. Scripps), was
designed by San Diego architect Irving Gill and erected in 1909-10; it is now
San Diego Historical Site number 119. In 1912 the University of California
formally accepted the marine station but renamed it Scripps Institution for
Biological Research, in recognition of the contributions of Ellen B. and Edward W. Scripps.
In the association's early years, E.W. Scripps had his
misgivings about it, chiefly because he was convinced that scientists could not
be businesslike. "I have been so schooled and trained in business that I have
acquired the vulgar habits of my vulgar class," he once wrote to Ritter, "and,
as a consequence, I am more provoked by any sort of a business mistake,
bookkeeping or otherwise, than I could possibly be exhilarated by the feeling
that I had helped to discover ten thousand new kinds of bugs."16 He urged an
organization such "as will enable the Society to do business in a strictly
business fashion, instead of attempting to conduct its affairs by the
parliamentary rules of a tea party."17 Scripps himself rebelled at handling the
association's minor details, and twice withdrew from the board of trustees.
He feared that Ritter's own scientific drive would be lost to
handling pettifogging trivia. But he regularly wrote to city, state, and
university officials, urging the success of what to him was a grand and worthy
idea. To James MacMullen, editor of the San Diego Union, he observed:
"The establishment of this institute at San Diego would perhaps add more toward
making the City known and noted than could any other institution representing
ten or twenty times the amount of actual capital to be invested."18
And Scripps gradually found the organization succeeding, in
no small measure because his sister generously wrote another check whenever it
had a need. These were not trivia: twelve cottages for staff and visitors, a
house for the director, a library building, the thousand-foot-long pier, an
85-foot ship Alexander Agassiz—each provided by Ellen B. Scripps,
cordially and kindly, from 1912 to 1916. She also established a generous endowment.
"I have never urged, in fact, have never asked either Mr.
Scripps or Miss Scripps for money," Ritter once said. "All I have ever done has
been to point out possibilities of development and research and the meaning of
results with the hope that the presentation would appeal to their wisdom
strongly enough to reach their inclination to give."19 His approach worked.
Once the institution was running smoothly, E.W. Scripps
became a great admirer of W.E. Ritter. That scientist, who established a secure
place for himself as a conscientious field man and philosophical
biologist, also proved to be a good man for day-to-day details. The newspaper
man, founder of the Scripps-Howard chain and other combines, was somewhat of a
recluse, called himself a "damned old crank," and expected people who worked for
him to run to his bidding. On his own whim, however, he would drive from Miramar
to the biological station from time to time, unannounced, stump up to Ritter's
second-floor office, and boom into conversation, dribbling cigar ashes
down his broad chest. Scripps never did begin at the bottom in biology, but he
did indeed get a broad insight. He took keen interest in some of the station's
projects—such as Francis B. Sumner's studies of generations of deermice from
varied environments, and those Scripps financed directly from annual donations.
Human nature especially fascinated him. "Tell me, Ritter, what is this damned
human animal anyway?" he would say.20 And the two men, so dissimilar except for
what Ritter later recognized as their common bond of childhood on midwestern
farms, would talk for hours.
After Ritter's retirement in 1923 the biological station turned to the entire
Pacific Ocean, became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and
continued to grow, slowly until the late 1940s, then in a burst.
It has fulfilled E.W. Scripps' promise of being "the biggest
thing of its kind in the world." Scripps Institution of Oceanography spreads
over many of its 170 acres, holds a high reputation internationally for its
research in all oceans, and remembers that its stature helped create the present
day campus of the University of California, San Diego.
NOTES
1. Tracey I. Storer, "William Emerson Ritter," (unpublished
manuscript, Scripps Archives, 1944), p. 2.
2. The early history of Scripps Institution has been well
told by Helen Raitt and Beatrice Moulton in Scripps Institution of
Oceanography. First fifty Years (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1967).
This present article is derived from that and from additional material in the
archives of Scripps Institution, La Jolla, California. All letters cited here
are in those archives. A guide to the papers of William E. Ritter in the
Scripps archives, by E.N. Shor, is also available there.
3. Letter from Baker to Ritter, January 26, 1903.
4. Letter from Ritter to Baker, February 2, 1903.
5. Letter from Baker to Ritter, February 6, 1903.
6. Letter from Ritter to Baker, February 13, 1903.
7. Letter from Baker to Ritter, March 15, 1903.
8. Letter from Baker to Ritter, March 20, 1903.
9. W.E. Ritter, "Preliminary Report on the Marine
Biological Survey Work Carried on by the Zoological Department of the
University of California at San Diego," Science, 28 (1903), p. 361.
10. William E. Ritter, "Philosophy of E.W. Scripps," (unpublished
manuscript, Scripps Archives, 1944), pp. 13-14.
11. Minutes of Meetings of the San Diego Marine Biological Association. . ., entry for August 2, 1903.
12. Letter from Baker to Ritter, September 17, 1903.
13. Letter from Ritter to Baker, August 23, 1903.
14. Letter from Baker to Ritter, September 17, 1903.
15. Minutes of Meetings of the San Diego Marine Biological Association. . .,
entry for September 26, 1903.
16. Letter from Scripps to Ritter, February 9, 1905.
17. Letter from Scripps to Ritter, March 30, 1904.
18. Letter from Scripps to MacMullen, November 23, 1904.
19. Letter from Ritter to C.A. Kofoid, December 11, 1915.
20. Tracy I. Storer, "William Emerson Ritter," (unpublished manuscript,
Scripps Archives, 1944) p. 5.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS on pages 163 and 164 (bottom) are from the
San Diego Historical Society's Title Insurance and Trust Collection. All others
are courtesy of Scripps Archives.
Preparation of this article was supported in part by a
contribution in memory of Margaret Scripps Hawkins which is here gratefully
acknowledged.
