Edward W. Scripps ran
a newspaper empire
from his Miramar ranch

Damned Old Crank that’s what a lot of people called Edward W. Scripps. He didn’t care; that’s what he called himself. The cantankerous newspaper publisher who made such an impact on San Diego was opinionated, unorthodox, egotistical the only way to be, he thought.

    For decades he ran a huge newspaper empire from his ranch at Miramar. This ranch was not only his headquarters, but his college. Statesmen, scientists, astronomers, nuts, faddists, theologians, flat earthers they were all invited to Miramar. They were royally entertained while he picked their brains.

    A grammar school dropout, he was one of the best educated men in the country. E.W. Scripps had his own ideas about education. He was against it. He did admit that the rudiments of spelling and arithmetic should be forced into urchin's noggins, but there he drew the line.

    He said formal education tended to press all minds into a stereotyped mold; it produced conformity instead of non conformity. Unless the applicant was a certified kook in his own right, no sheepskin toter could get into the Scripps organization.

    His paper here was the San Diego Sun. It is said he ran it to irritate the Spreckels interest who then owned the San Diego Union. E.W. regarded John Spreckels as a fink of the first water. Strangely enough, this is the exact opinion Spreckels had of him. The Sun went down in 1939.

    A major spokesman for the "little man," Scripps was accused by many of being a socialist. This made him laugh. "Why socialism is the most conservative political philosophy of all," he said. And he was no conservative.

    E.W. drank more whiskey a day than most people drink water. On four quarts a day, he had a perpetual buzz on but was seldom observed to be drunk. At night he kept a bottle under his pillow so he could have a snort whenever he woke up. He also puffed his way through 40 large Havana cigars a day. Drunk, he was a better publisher than most were sober.

    After decades of thus insulting his liver and adjoining organs, his eyesight began to fail and he shriveled to a little brown gnome with no feelings in his hands or feet. So, he flat out quit smoking and drinking and recovered.

    In 1890, E.W. came to San Diego, liked the town and built Miramar Ranch on a 2,100 acre section of arid mesa. Miramar Naval Air Station now lies southwest of the ranch house. Much of the area is now filled with the eucalyptus trees Scripps planted decades ago.

    Then he and his brother decided to raise lemons. The ground was so hard he had to dynamite a hole in the adobe for each tree. When the trees bore fruit, the lemons were the strangest in the world all rind! However, E.W. wasn’t sour about it; some of his newspapers were lemons, too.

    E.W., a multi-millionaire, wouldn't associate with millionaires. "I’m a rich man, and that’s dangerous, you know," he once said. "But it isn’t just the money that’s the risk; it’s the living around with other rich men. They get to thinking all alike. So I don’t think like a rich man; I think more like a left labor galoot."

    Sister Ellen Scripps may have weighed 97 pounds, but she was no simpering weakling. Semi-deified by many San Diegans as some sort of plaster saint, she was a crack reporter and a sharp businesswoman. Several times she bailed her little brother out of financial pickles. It is she who was primarily responsible for Scripps Hospital and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. E.W. helped out with the latter, too, because he liked the sea more than he hated education.

    He felt that people who prattled of growing old gracefully were retarded adolescents. He believed it was silly to start his sons at the bottom; he started them at the top. He was fond of saying things like, "Never do anything today that you can put off 'til tomorrow," and "One of the greatest assets any man can secure is a reputation for eccentricity."

    In his later years, E.W. bought a yacht and roamed around the world. He died of apoplexy in 1926 in Monrovia Harbor, Liberia, a port off-beat enough even for the damned old crank.

    Long-time newspaperman "Woody" Lockwood has forgotten more about San Diego history than most historians remember. Two years retired from daily newspaper work, he is researching a book on military food.