From Society Doyenne to Architect, Women Left Marks on California Parks

Among the blessings of California are its 1 million acres of state parks, established to preserve places for recreation and to keep intact important historical sites and wilderness areas, ranging from lush redwood forests to bone-dry deserts. Each of the 300 park “units” in the California system has its own story to tell, but only a handful feature women as leading characters. Here are the stories of some that do:

* Midwesterner Ellen Browning Scripps, a member of the family that founded the Scripps newspaper chain, discovered the beauty and botanical marvels of the Pacific Coast near La Jolla in 1891. After contributing to and helping run the family newspapers (34 in 15 states by 1914), she had a house built for herself in La Jolla in 1896.

Several parcels of coastal property that Scripps bought about 1910 and left to the city of San Diego after her death in 1932 ultimately became a California pride and joy known as Torrey Pines State Reserve. Her gift preserved a lovely, wind-swept stretch of beach and lagoons beloved by bird-watchers, and it also protected a stand of gnarled, rare Torrey pines.

Miss Ellen, as she was called, never married, became a doyenne of La Jolla society and contributed to other notable organizations such as the San Diego Zoo and Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

* In 1930, Harriett E. Weaver, known as “Petey” to her friends, became the first woman to serve as a park ranger in California. She worked in four parks during her 20-year career. Her favorite was the 18,000-acre Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 20 miles south of San Jose. The park, founded in 1902 and the oldest in the system, has camping sites and more than 100 miles of trails. This is where the battle to save the coast redwoods began and also where ornithologists finally discovered the nest of a marbled murrelet, ending years of speculation about where the mysterious bird laid its eggs.

Weaver lived in a cabin near the Big Basin Redwoods headquarters, gave interpretive talks and wrote about the landscape she loved. Best known among her works is the children’s book “Frosty: A Raccoon to Remember,” the story of an orphaned raccoon she raised in the park.

* At least two California state parks preserve houses built by women. One is Vikingsholm, part of Emerald Bay State Park on the south shore of Lake Tahoe, looking out to Fannette Island. The fiord-like setting reminded Lora Josephine Knight, a divorcee with plenty of money, of Scandinavia. So the summer house she had built there in 1929 looks like a castle from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, with massive timber beams and Viking dragon heads at the peaks of the roof.

* Only ruins remain at Jack London State Historic Park, near the town of Glen Ellen, to mark the site of the writer’s dream house, built from 1911 to 1913, when it was destroyed by fire. London died three years later, but his wife and editor, Charmian, stayed on at the couple’s beloved Sonoma Mountain ranch and started from scratch, building what she called the “House of Happy Walls” nearby. It is now a museum dedicated to London.

* Noted California architect Julia Morgan, who designed nearly 800 buildings before her death in 1957, left a lasting legacy to California’s state parks.

She was the first woman to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering, in 1894, and the first woman to attend L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Later she found a mentor and client in Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. When he decided to build a house at San Simeon on the coast south of Big Sur, he chose Morgan as the architect. The princely estate, crowned by Morgan’s Mediterranean Revival mansion and surrounded by 127 acres of gardens, terraces, outbuildings and pools, is one of California’s most fabled sights. Tours of Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument are offered daily; reservations are recommended.

Less well known is Morgan’s work at Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, near Pebble Beach. The rustic Arts and Crafts lodges and halls she designed there were commissioned in 1913 by Phoebe Apperson Hearst as a YWCA meeting place and retreat. Shaded by cypress and Monterey pine, Asilomar is an all-purpose conference facility, though individuals can book accommodations on a space-available basis.

Torrey Pines State Reserve, 9609 Waples St., Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92121; telephone (858) 755-2063, Internet https://www.torreypine.org.

Big Basin Redwoods State Park, 21600 Big Basin Way, Boulder Creek, CA 95006; tel. (831) 338-8860, Internet https://members.aol.com/bbrsp/index.htm.

Emerald Bay State Park/Vikings-holm, P.O. Box 266, Tahoma, CA 96142; tel. (530) 525-7232, Internet https://ceres.ca.gov/sierradsp/eb.html

Jack London State Historic Park, 2400 London Ranch Road, Glen Ellen, CA 95442; tel. (707) 938-5216, Internet https://www.parks.sonoma.net/JLpark.html.

Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, 750 Hearst Castle Road, San Simeon, CA 93452; tel. (800) 444-4445 (reservations), Internet https://www.hearstcastle.org.

Asilomar Conference Grounds, 800 Asilomar Blvd., Pacific Grove, CA 93950; tel. (831) 372-8016, fax (831) 372-7227, Internet https://www.asilomarcenter.com.