Review of the Sixties — Part 4

The following article first appeared in the December 31, 1969 edition of “The Ojai Valley News” on the front page. It is reprinted here with their permission.

Review of the Sixties — Part 4

Freeway fighters win scenic highway battle

by Gary Hachadourian


(This is another in a series of articles reviewing the Sixties in the Ojai Valley.)

Early in the Decade the state legislature passed the Scenic Highway Act and then asked the counties which roads they wanted designated as “scenic highways.” Ventura county supervisors fingered Highway 150 from Santa Barbara to Santa Paula — through the Ojai valley — and that’s when the Battle of the Scenic Highway originated.

In the beginning, there was no opposition. In fact, if you had asked the average resident how he felt about Highway 150 as a “scenic highway,” the reply would probably have been “just fine.” It wasn’t until the state decided to choose the route that the first shots were fired and the battle joined.

The word “freeway”
In the beginning “scenic highway” had meant to the public, in essence, “making the highway more scenic.” When the state came forward with varied routes, residents soon learned that the new Highway 150 would be built according to “freeway standards.” The word “freeway” had alarming connotations and the issue at once became emotional. Few people wanted another freeway through the valley.

Between Ojai and Upper Ojai, four routes were being considered, the state announced. Though public sentiment was anti-construction, citizens early came to favor a route through Lion Canyon to the south of the city, away from the valley floor.

The Division of Highways had previously ceased to consider that route; but in what was seen as a partial victory for opponents of the highway, the state announced that it would re-study Lion Canyon, a more “expensive” route.

In May of 1967, however, at what was to become a turning point in the history of the battle, the newly formed Committee to Preserve the Ojai determined that it would actively oppose any selection of routes. In August of that year, the East Ojai Valley Associates, which up until then had been urging strict standards in construction made the same decision.

Throughout the next year, the Division of Highways persistently urged the city and county to agree on a route of its own accord and plan to set aside a “corridor of beauty” along that route in order to ensure that the scenic highway would indeed be scenic.

Huge petition
The City Council, in September of 1968, resolved that the Lion Canyon route was most desirable, a decision that sparked the Committee to Preserve the Ojai to get thousands of names in opposition on a petition.

When the all-important public meeting between state engineers and the aroused public came in October of 1968, the Committee to Preserve the Ojai presented a map of the valley on which each landowner who opposed all construction had his property colored red. Color the valley red.

The issue was not decided, however, until late 1969. At the urging of the City Council and the Board of Supervisors, the state agreed to postpone route adoption “for an indefinite period” in order to consider, first, “new priorities in valley road construction.”

The force of public opinion had triumphed.

There was irony in this “victory.” Opponents had been fighting to keep the valley rural by opposing the road. But it was the effects of urbanization that had brought the new road work priorities into existence and cause the state to lay off the scenic highway.

Traffic volume in the valley had grown to the point where, because freeway construction was falling behind schedule, the interim widening of Highway 33 between Foster Park and Ojai took precedence over the construction of any new road. More people in more cars needed to get in and out of the valley.

And the traffic volume within the City of Ojai had doubled. In December of 1967, City Manager Jack Blalock said that the city’s number one problem was traffic congestion in the downtown area.

In order to ease congestion, the city felt, the state should approve and construct a loop of two one-way streets in the downtown area along its state Highway 150 route.

And the loop was intended to solve not only traffic problems.

For, throughout the decade, another type of outside pressure on the valley had worked to force change within it. And though, in this case, the force was indirect, it was nonetheless real.

Ojai’s business community, with some exceptions, was suffering. As the decade progressed, the situation became increasingly pronounced to the point where, in 1968, despite population growth, taxable sales were the same as they were in 1964, this despite the fact that prices had gone up.

Promoting this situation was, of course, the development of new, convenient and competitive shopping centers in nearby cities, most notably in Ventura.

Absentee owners
Promoting it, also, was the fact that many owners of floor space in Ojai’s historic and distinctive shopping area, the Arcade, were absentee owners. They showed no inclination to spend money needed to refurbish their properties, even to the extent of making them structurally sound. (In 1966, an engineer opined that the Arcade could collapse in a severe earthquake.)

And the forces pressing for action became compounded in the latter half of the decade when the then unincorporated area along Maricopa Road to the west of the city quite clearly was being considered as a target site by commercial developers.

Also, in the untouched Santa Ana Valley a few miles away, county planners in 1967 approved plans for a 512-acre residential and golf course development that would include a new shopping center.

The traffic loop of two one-way streets in the downtown area was crucial to a plan to turn the tide. Getting the state to approve and construct a loop became the city’s number one priority. Thus, the Battle of the Scenic Highway was an ironic “victory” for Ojai.

The outrage was only reactionary, a response to the continuing force of urbanization.

If Ojai truly was to determine its future, the valley would have to anticipate events; would have to search its soul in an effort to decide what it wanted; would have to take steps to ensure that no unmanageable situations could even arise.

It would have to plan carefully, and completely, and stand by that plan.