The plaque’s outdated information will not be made current.
A longstanding plaque honoring Indigenous remains at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography was removed more than a year ago, with no plans for replacement.
The large plaque once stood several feet southwest of the Martin Johnson House on Biological Grade in the SIO campus and read “The oldest known archaeological site in Southern California occupied by the La Jollan I Indians 7530 +/- 190 years before the present.”
The plaque was dated in 1962 and predates UCSD, sort of: UCSD was founded in November 1960, with the UC Regents approving the name “UC La Jolla” in 1959.
The university’s name was changed to UC San Diego upon its founding, but the plaque is inscribed with “UCLJ.”
The plaque stood for decades but was removed in September 2023 as it “was no longer accurate,” according to SIO communications director Lauren Fimbres Wood.
“There are no plans for a replacement,” she said. No other information was available.
In November 1992, 130,000-year-old fossil remains were discovered at a San Diego freeway expansion project site.
The remains were excavated through 2017, and the discovery was named the Cerutti Mastodon site after Richard Cerutti who found it), according to the San Diego Natural History Museum.
“If interpreted correctly, the Cerutti Mastodon site becomes the oldest archaeological site in the Americas, pushing back the record of early humans on this continent by more than 100,000 years,” SDNHM wrote.
The removal of the plaque is somewhat of an irritation for local tribal leader Kilma Lattin.
“It’s a loss to La Jolla’s history, community and visitors that there will be no replacement at least commemorating the original artifacts that were there,” he said.
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