When Colonel Ed Fletcher bought Solana Beach in 1922, there were only two houses, George Jones’s house on Barbara Street (later occupied by Herschell Larrick Sr. and his family) and this Highway 101 house of Jones’s sister, Lucy Estes and her husband, N. H. Estes, and their son, Herb. The Estes family was originally from San Francisco. They built this first home in Solana Beach on the narrow dirt road highway 101 and put in a well. Lucy Estes lived in the house until the time of her death when the house was sold to the Willis Real Estate Co.
(Photo from the San Dieguito Citizen, March 20, 1952 in the Solana Beach Heritage Museum Collection)
The first house in Solana Beach was the home of the N. H. Estes family on Highway 101.
(Photo courtesy of the Mandeville Special Collections Library, UCSD)
1923/24 aerial view. In the middle is Highway 101 with the Estes house (with the light roofs) and the Ford Garage at the south end of the plaza. Fletcher Cove is at the upper left.
[sources: Early Solana Beach, Recollections by George C. Wilkens & Robert “Chuckles” Hernandez as told to Jim Nelson, 2002 and Solana Beach, Forty Years of Progress, 1922-1962, April, 1962.]