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Portrait of Ellen Browning Scripps

Ellen Browning Scripps gave La Jolla its institutions

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Photo: American Historical Socy. - Steel Engraving by M.J. Conn, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ellen Browning Scripps was born in London in 1836 and moved to Illinois as a child. She was one of the few women of her generation to attend college. She worked with her half-brothers James and Edward in the newspaper business, starting in Detroit, and invested in the papers that became the Scripps chain. The investments made her wealthy.

She moved to La Jolla in the late 1890s and built a home on Prospect Street. She never married and spent the rest of her life giving her fortune away.

What she built

With her brother E.W., she funded the Marine Biological Association of San Diego in 1903, which became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, now part of UC San Diego. She paid for the Scripps Memorial Hospital and Scripps Metabolic Clinic in 1924, the beginning of what is now Scripps Health.

She also helped buy and preserve land at Torrey Pines to protect the rare pine trees, gave money for the Bishop’s School, the La Jolla Woman’s Club, the La Jolla Recreation Center and the Children’s Pool, and supported the San Diego Zoo.

Legacy

She died in 1932 at 95. Her home site is now the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla. Scripps Health and Scripps Institution of Oceanography are among the largest employers and research institutions in the region, and much of La Jolla’s civic life rests on her gifts.

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