From<a href="https://www.bikeandkayaktours.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/DSC_3593.jpg"> Bike and Kayak Tours</a>

Easy to visit caves by kayak

In the early 1920s, Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, was looking at the illuminated mouth of the cave from the darkness inside and remarked that the silhouette resembled Sunny Jim, the cartoon mascot for British Force Wheat Cereal. The name stuck. It was largest of seven shallow sea caves along the bluffs of La Jolla named the Mammoth Caves.

Sunny Jim Cave. The silhouette resembled the cartoon mascot for British Force Wheat Cereal.

As for Sunny Jim and its current access, back in 1902, two property owners along Cave Street — Thomas Diamond and Gustav Shultz — had a tussle over a shared idea; to dig an access tunnel from the top of the bluff down to the largest of the sea caves and charge admission. The caves were a popular attraction, but could only be accessed from the sea. Diamond petitioned to run a tunnel from his property down and provide a lateral tunnel connecting all seven caves in November.

Professor Gustav, however, had plans for developing the cave, and in December, the two got into a fight. From the December 18, 1902 L.A. Times’ Local Brevities column: “There was a little difficulty between Thomas Diamond and Prof. Gustav Schultz of La Jolla Tuesday, which resulted in the arrest of Diamond on the charge of battery on the professor.”

The original Sunny Jim

From <a href="http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BTNSchulz.htm">Gustav Schultz website</a>

While Diamond was out on bail and couldn’t provoke him without facing more serious charges, the aging professor hired two Chinese laborers to dig the tunnel. The tunnel was opened to the public at 25 cents per person in 1903. Early visitors, including Baum, had to visit the cave from above with little light and no steps and use ropes for the unsteady descent. The cave was also used in the other direction; from the sea, smugglers imported booze, Chinese immigrants and opium through the cave. Even Ellen Browning Scripps recalled standing on a point facing the caves and watching opium smugglers unload their goods into the cave.

You can visit the Cave from above through the Cave Store for $5 and walk down the 144 steps to the cavern, or, for an in-depth look from the water, La Jolla Bike and Kayak Tours offers two hour professionally guided kayak trips from La Jolla Shores that run daily from 9AM, weather permitting. Rates run from $39 -$99. Tours run through the holidays except for Christmas Day.