This Month in History: Glimpses into Pacific Beach’s past

This Month in History is a feature in PB Monthly highlighting local happenings from yesteryear. John Fry is a writer, publisher and historian and co-founder and president of the Pacific Beach Historical Society. He also is the author of “Images of America: Pacific Beach” and “Pacific Beach Through Time.”

September 1896 — 125 Years Ago

“The moving of the school house to the new site adjoining the Presbyterian church gives general satisfaction and greatly improves the appearance of our thriving resort,” reported the Pacific Beach Notes column in the Sept. 18 issue of the San Diego Union. “Miss Lou Jennings began her school duties with a larger attendance than usual, there being only two vacant seats, and it is expected these will soon be occupied”

September 1921 — 100 Years Ago

At the school board meeting of Sept. 19 a motion to place signs in front of the schoolhouse warning motorists “to drive slow” passed unanimously. Folks in La Jolla fired off indignant letters to Councilman Fred Heilbron protesting the 18-cent toll being charged by the Pacific Telephone Company. Miss Lenore Barrett and her grandparents returned from a visit with friends and relatives in England. They also visited WWI battlefields in France. Lenore lived most of her 90 years in the same house on Shasta Street.

September 1946 — 75 Years Ago

Security Trust & Savings, established in San Diego in 1893, opened a branch in Pacific Beach at the southwest corner of Garnet and Bayard.

In addition to banking, beach residents would be able to pay their city water, gas and electric bills, noted manager Marden Herbert. The Franks Dredging Co., of San Francisco, was awarded a $433,649 contract for work on Mission Bay. The firm agreed to pay the cost of raising the bridge from South Mission to Ocean Beach to get the dredge through. It was quickly determined that it would be easier to partially submerge the barge, go under the bridge at low tide, then refloat the barge.

September 1971 — 50 Years Ago

Demolition began on the historic O. J. Kendall stone house at 3995 Crown Point Drive. A large apartment complex took its place. Kendall Street was named after someone else. The passing of Clarence Pratt on Aug. 29 was reported in the Sept. 1 San Diego Union. Pratt operated a store at the northwest corner of Grand and Lamont in the early part of the 20th century. Earl Taylor died on Sept. 12. He came to Pacific Beach in 1923 in time to help develop Crystal Pier and a whole lot of the rest of Pacific Beach west of Cass Street. His son Vernon helped make the Earl and Birdie Taylor Library a reality.

September 1996 — 25 Years Ago

City officials said it was hard to tell if bicyclists and skaters were obeying the 8-mph speed limit imposed last summer along the Mission Beach boardwalk. “My take on it is that things are probably about the same,” said Terri Williams, chief of the city’s coastal parks in an article in the Sept. 3 Union-Tribune. Widening the boardwalk would allow separate travel lanes for pedestrians and wheeled users, noted Councilman Byron Wear.