The Fay Avenue Path's Southern Stretch Was Never a Bike Path. The Signs Are Catching Up.

Where does the La Jolla Bike Path actually end? If you go by the paint and the signs, it keeps going south past Via del Norte toward Camino de la Costa. If you go by the City of San Diego, it doesn't. The signs that suggest otherwise are scheduled to come down.

Upper Hermosa's straightest walking line runs between Nautilus Street and Mira Monte. It goes by several names: the La Jolla Bike Path, the Fay Avenue Bike Path and the Fay Avenue Extension. Cyclists and pedestrians share it. Steep slopes covered in native plants rise along its east side, and unpaved walking paths continue south to Camino de la Costa. San Diego Union-Tribune reporting from September notes that part of that southern section is owned by La Jolla United Methodist Church.

The church-owned piece is the key to this fall's change. What most neighbors think of as one path is really a city-recognized bike path, an unpaved continuation and a strip of private land, all following a line a railroad laid out in 1894. Until recently, the signs didn't show where one ended and the next began.

What Changes, and Where

The proposal came from La Jolla resident Debbie Adams, who leads the volunteers who look after the path in coordination with the city. She brought two specific requests to the La Jolla Traffic & Transportation Board on Aug. 18. The city's own scope goes somewhat further. Together they cover four kinds of fixes:

Adams called the stop sign the "very easy" fix. "That's a very busy street (with) lots of traffic there," she told the Union-Tribune. "So we hope a stop sign will encourage bikers and walkers to stop before they cross Via Del Norte."

The second fix is the more interesting one. According to the same article, the easement south toward Camino de la Costa had been "erroneously marked as a bike path" for many years. "It is not a Class 1 bike path," Adams said. "It is an easement, technically."

Taken together, the changes give the corridor a clear southern edge. The stop sign at Via del Norte marks a crossing. Clearing the bike-path paint and signs south of it means people stop getting cycling directions on a stretch that was never a Class 1 bike path.

A Straight Line Drawn for Trains

The path is so straight because it was never laid out for walking.

Pacific Beach was founded in 1887, and J. Malcolm Forbes built a railroad connecting it to downtown San Diego. On May 15, 1894, he opened an extension to La Jolla. According to a 2018 Union-Tribune history of La Jolla's railroads, the Pacific Beach and La Jolla Railway ran "in a straight shot coming up from Pacific Beach." It followed what is now La Jolla Hermosa Avenue and the La Jolla Bike Path, then Electric Avenue, Cuvier and Prospect streets, ending at the rear entrance of the Arcade Depot. A trip from downtown that used to take all day now took 30 minutes.

The same article calls that railroad the very reason La Jolla's first houses were built, and notes that Ellen Browning Scripps first arrived on the line in 1896. The line became the Los Angeles & San Diego Beach Railway in 1906, though it never reached north of La Jolla. It went under in 1918, and the tracks were pulled up the next year.

The right-of-way didn't sit empty for long. In 1923, John D. Spreckels started extending his San Diego Electric Railway to Pacific Beach and La Jolla. Its streetcars used most of the old railroad's route, but instead of turning onto Electric Avenue, the line followed today's bike path toward La Jolla High School and then ran next to car traffic on Fay Avenue. Service ended on Sept. 16, 1940.

That history explains why the path runs dead straight and why cross streets like Via del Norte cut across it.

The Corridor Runs on Volunteer Hours

The path's history also explains who takes care of it. The volunteers Adams leads keep the corridor clean and passable, working with the city.

Their effort isn't new. Union-Tribune coverage from July 2022 traces the current push back to late 2015, when residents started asking for repairs. New signs and street markings followed in June 2016. Ten years on, the city's current scope includes replacing signs on old, rusted poles.

According to that 2022 report, the city gave the volunteers a year-round right-of-entry permit. That let them hold short cleanups of about 90 minutes whenever needed, in addition to a larger annual cleanup. The work so far has included hauling out litter and dead brush, weeding, cutting back plants that grow over the path, and digging out buried construction debris. Longer-term plans include controlling invasive Arundo and adding native plants and trees. La Jolla Parks & Beaches and the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla are named as partners.

By March 2023, the group had marked five years of this work. In a Union-Tribune look back, Adams described the goal as to "keep the path clean and safe while protecting the native habitat around it." Volunteers had recorded Southern California scrub, cacti, buckwheat and trees on the slopes east of the path.

The signage proposal came out of that same work. Adams, who leads the volunteer effort, is the one who brought the missing Via del Norte stop sign and the mislabeled easement to the traffic board.

How a Sign Change Moves Through La Jolla

Swapping a few signs takes several steps. For the Fay Avenue path, they went like this:

1. Aug. 18, 2026. Adams presented both proposals to the La Jolla Traffic & Transportation Board and asked for its approval so the city could put in a project order for the signs. The board voted 7-0-1 in support, with one abstention.
2. Sept. 3, 2026. The item went to the La Jolla Community Planning Association as item 6.6 on its consent agenda. The minutes describe it as "the City of San Diego's proposal to remove bike path-related signage and road paint along the path between Via del Norte and Camino de la Costa." The consent agenda was approved with no objections.
3. Next. With both approvals in place, ordering and installing the signs is up to the city.

City spokesman Anthony Santacroce told the Union-Tribune that more updates are expected along the way, and he described the city's scope this way:

"The city is working on some signage updates in the area of the Fay Avenue Bike Path to replace signs on old, rusted poles, remove some old signs, repaint the markings that formerly pointed to private property, and ensure all signage and directionality remain aligned with city facilities including streets."

The key phrase is "aligned with city facilities." Apart from restoring the stop sign, the changes make the signs match what's already on the ground: a city bike path from Nautilus Street to Mira Monte, a busy crossing at Via del Norte, and land to the south that the paint had been treating as part of the bike route.

What This Means on Your Next Walk

None of this changes how the corridor looks. The slopes, the scrub and the straight run of the old rail grade all stay. What changes is the information along it. Once the new signs go up, people heading south will have a stop sign at Via del Norte, and the bike-path markings will end where the Class 1 bike path ends. The unpaved paths toward Camino de la Costa will still be there, and part of them will still be church land.

At Nelson Brothers Team, we think the best local knowledge is the kind you only get from walking the same blocks every week, like knowing which crossing is missing a stop sign. If you're curious how Upper Hermosa's history shapes its streets, lots and daily routes, let's connect. We're always glad to talk about it.