Wedding & Event Designers
History of the Rose Creek Cottage
Pacific Beach ~ San Diego ~ California
"Braemar"
The home of Frederick & Emma Scripps.
The Rose Creek Cottage, which was their dining room,
is visible here to the left in this 1925 photo.

On December 17, 1893 a marriage license was issued by the county clerk to
Frederick Tudor Scripps, 40, a native of Illinois & Emma Jessop, 20, a native of England.
In 1901 the City Directory lists F.T.Scripps as a rancher & a resident of Pacific Beach.
The Scripps built this wondrous home in 1906 at the northwest corner of
Mission Bay & called it Braemar.

It wasn't long before Braemar became the cultural center of Pacific Beach,which was
made up mostly of fruit orchards at the time. Early residents enjoyed holiday functions &
birthday parties to which all the children in the beach area were invited.

In the mid 1920's the dining room, now the Rose Creek Cottage, was added on so
that Mrs. Scripps could entertain in an even grander fashion.

In 1955 the property was sold by the Scripps to Vernon Taylor & Clinton McKinnon for a
proposed hotel. The old house was razed in 1959 to make way for the Catamaran Hotel.
The dining room was spared & served as the Catamaran Wedding Chapel for three
decades. In 1985 the chapel stood in the way of a planned hotel expansion and was
sighted for demolition. This fact was discovered by Eve Anderson, a member of the Pacific
Beach Town Council. Vern Taylor and his sister Erma Taylor O'brien underwrote the
cost of moving the chapel to a vacant lot at Grand Ave. & Bayard Ave.
where it sat until a site was found to place it on.

Pacific Beach Town Council President Jeff Sykes and his successor Jim Moore, searched
unsuccessfully for a location for the cottage and time was running out. With days to
spare, Representative Bill Lowery convinced the Navy to allow the cottage to be moved to
the property the Navy owned along Rose Creek. On October 30, 1986 the cottage was
razed once again and moved right down Garnet Ave two miles east to it's present location.

Led by Jim Moore, now President of the PB Town Council, a team of volunteers got the
cottage into place. Nine month of negotiations between the town council, city
government and the Navy then took place. The Navy was concerned that, if the cottage
was given a "historic" designation they would be unable to get the property back if they
needed it. The use of the word "chapel" also created questions about separation of church


Once these hurdles were overcome, the PB Town Council then faced the cost of bringing
the building up to code. A year after the move donations had reached $16,633. The project
was nearly completed when the PB Town Council was presented with a $3535 sewer
hook-up fee. In November of 1987, outgoing City Councilman Mike Gotch, in one of his
last official acts, convinced the city to waive the fee, saying "This is my goodbye".

Now, two decades later, the Rose Creek Cottage is still a popular location for weddings &
parties. A special "Thank You" goes out to all the hard working & dedicated volunteers
that made the preservation of this wonderful historic building possible.
Wedding & Event Designers, Inc.
2525 Garnet Ave.
San Diego, CA 92109
858-490-0468
rosecreekcottage@gmail.com
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