San Diego Vacation: Sunny Jim Sea Cave

Before my husband suggested that we take a vacation in San Diego, I didn’t know much about it, besides that it had a world-famous zoo. So we set about researching and came up with an itinerary for our short (Monday to Friday) trip. We decided to spend one day exploring La Jolla and Pacific Beach.

One stop we made that day was at the Cave Store to descend to Sunny Jim Sea Cave. It turns out that this tourist attraction has an interesting history.

(You’ll have to excuse my amateur photography; I thought it would be fun to include some of the pictures I took, even though the quality isn’t great.)

The Caves

There are seven sea caves in the sandstone bluffs along the stretch of coast just north of La Jolla Cove. Sunny Jim Sea Cave is the only sea cave accessible by land in California.

It is commonly believed that the name La Jolla comes from joya, which is Spanish for “jewel.” However James A. (Lefty) Leftwich contends that La Jolla is a corruption of an Indian word, mut-lah-hoyyah, meaning “the cave place.”

In the late 1800s the San Diego-La Jolla Railway Co. tried various risky advertising stunts to attract tourists. One of these was lowering people over the cliffs to peer into the sea caves.

The Tunnel

Land access to Sunny Jim Sea Cave was a project devised by Gustauf Schultz (or Gustav Schulz), a German painter and mining engineer. He came to California to retire, but instead came up with a business. In 1902 he hired two Chinese labourers to dig a tunnel up from the cave to the top of the bluff using picks and shovels, which took about two years.

At first visitors would pay a few cents to be lowered down the tunnel by a rope. A few years later 133 wooden steps were built. The store that houses the head of the tunnel was erected in 1906 (as far as I know the original building is still used). Today admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children.

Smuggling

During Prohibition the tunnel was allegedly used to smuggle alcohol into San Diego. It is also said that smugglers of illegal immigrants and opium used the cave. It has been the set for pirate movies, too.

The Name

Sunny Jim Sea Cave was named by L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Wizard of Oz. He named it after a cartoon character that appeared on boxes of British breakfast cereal in the early 1900s, since the cave opening resembled the shape of Sunny Jim’s head.