The pier at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography is marking its centennial in 2016.
An important support facility for research and educational activities, Scripps Pier serves as a collection site for clean seawater, marine animals and atmospheric and oceanic data. It is also a launching site for small boats.
“The Scripps Pier is an icon of San Diego but for we scientists, it’s also an icon of research,” said Scripps director Margaret Leinen. “One of the world’s oldest ocean temperature measurement records originates at that pier. It’s a hub for the iconic carbon-dioxide measurement program operated by our Keeling lab, and is the locale of everything from sampling of marine life to the mapping of surface currents using high-frequency radar.”
Leinen added, “The pier, like the rest of our campus, owes its existence to the generosity of Ellen Browning Scripps. I have to think she’d be proud to see how vital it is a century later.”
Since construction of the original pier in 1916, the Scripps Pier has been a prominent landmark on the La Jolla coastline. Since August 1916, the pier has been the site of daily seawater temperature and salinity measurements, the longest continuous readings of such ocean parameters. The Scripps Pier also houses the oldest tide gauge station in the open ocean on the West Coast, installed in 1924.
Ellen Browning Scripps (1836-1932), the most significant donor to the institution in its formative years, was born in London and emigrated to the United States with her father in 1844. In 1866, she joined her brother James in his newspaper business, and later she worked with her younger half-brother E.W. Scripps in his newspaper business.
E.W. settled in San Diego about 1890, and Ellen built a house in La Jolla soon after that. Never married, and wealthy from funds derived from the family newspaper businesses and from an inheritance, Ellen Scripps became a major benefactor in La Jolla and elsewhere.
In its earliest years, Ellen provided generous funds for the Marine Biological Association, served on its board, and gave it a large endowment. An unassuming person, she preferred that the institution be named for her brother George, but the University of California chose the overall Scripps surname in 1912. Finally, in 1988, the pier was named for Ellen Browning Scripps.
The original pier was constructed of reinforced concrete and wooden pilings and had a wooden deck, which survived many years and storms with extensive repairs made to it in 1926 and 1946. Major concerns about the soundness of the old pier finally led to its total replacement. The new one, which is 1,090 feet long, was built of reinforced concrete alongside the original pier, which was then removed.
As one of the world’s biggest research piers, Scripps is used for boat launching and a variety of experiments. Data on ocean conditions and plankton taken from the pier since 1916 provide an unparalleled source of information on changes in the coastal Pacific Ocean. The pier also provides a supply of fresh seawater, a critical resource for a marine institution, to an array of laboratories and aquaria. Seawater is pumped up from the end of the pier, then filtered and stored in holding tanks. Scripps pumps about 1.8 million gallons of seawater each day.
Halfway down the ramp north of the pier is the Diving Facility, used since 1958 by Scripps divers to house their compressors and equipment for recharging scuba tanks and as a site for inspection and maintenance of diving equipment. The training program for scientists using underwater breathing apparatus began at Scripps in 1951. It is the oldest program of that kind in the country, and has established many of the rules for safe diving with underwater equipment. Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier.
Old: Original Scripps Pier, built in 1915-1916, was a 1,000-foot-long facility for acquiring clean seawater for the campus laboratories and the public aquarium. Ellen Browning Scripps provided all of the money, $36,000, for its construction. It was demolished in 1988.
New: The new Scripps Pier, built in 1987 at a cost of nearly $4 million just south of the old wooden pier, is 1,084 feet long, 22 1/2-feet wide and is 2,600 feet east of a 600-foot-deep submarine canyon.
Research uses: 500 boat launchings per year; Many oceanographic instruments deployed from pier. By using pier scientists can bypass 95 percent of surf; NOAA wave sensors are mounted on bottom at the end of the pier; Plankton samples can be taken from end of the pier in nets or in flume; Water temperatures (top and bottom) are taken from end of pier every day; Pier gives continuous means of conducting research beyond the surf line without launching a boat.