The following article first appeared in the Sunday, December 28, 1969 edition of “THE OJAI VALLEY NEWS” on the front page. The article is reprinted here with their permission.
Review of the Sixties — Part 3
Urbanization — the story of the decade
In this, the third of a series of articles reviewing what happened in the Ojai Valley during the Sixties, reporter Gary Hachadourian takes a close look at the causes and effects of urbanization on the once-rural valley. “Urbanization” is the hallmark of the past decade, according to reporter Hachadourian, who spent months scanning the front pages of the Ojai Valley News of the years 1960–1970.
by Gary Hachadourian
The urbanization of the Ojai Valley was forced upon it — forced in three ways:
By pressure from outside the valley;
By pressure from within it, generated to ensure that growth would be ordered along predetermined lines, rather than haphazard.
And, once urbanization began, it was forced by the “system” and by the power of the valley’s “personality.”
These forces were not isolated one from another; there was no strictly sequential order in which they made themselves felt. They coexisted.
But the forces of urbanization here did make themselves felt, for the first time at least, in roughly a sequence. So, for the purpose of simplifying this article, they probably should be handled that way.
From outside
First, then, the forces exerted on the valley from outside it.
They ranged from the vague and unnerving thought that the golden Southland was growing and would soon need more space in which to grow, to the very specific and community-rallying force exerted by the state as it went ahead with plans to construct, first a freeway and then a scenic highway along the valley’s floor.
In 1960, a study reported that the population of Ventura County, set then at just under 200,000 would double within 20 years. The report named Ojai as a target area for residential development and said that the valley’s recreational areas would lure many vacationers.
(As it turned out, that report was modest. For the county’s population has almost doubled in ten years rather than twenty.)
In 1962, a professional firm doing a land-use study for the county forecast that the population of the Ojai Valley, in fact, would more than double in 20 years. This firm, which had also been commissioned by the City of Ojai to draft a general plan for development, said valley population would jump from its current level of about 15,000 up to 40,000 by 1985. Later forecasts would predict even greater jumps.
(As of this year, population of the valley from Casitas Springs to Upper Ojai has risen since 1960, to just under 22,000.)
A person who lived in Ojai during these early years of the decade might have doubted the actual figures in these reports if he had wanted to; but there was no way for him conscientiously to deny the forecast of growth.
County growth
The county was developing rapidly during these years. Most of the development was (and is now) taking place in the southwestern part of the county, in those areas closest to Los Angeles. But it was occurring also in Ventura and Oxnard. More significantly, it was primarily commercial and industrial development that was going on in this, the coastal area.
But, in the valley, it was seldom pressure exerted for the expansion of industry. County and state officials and private developers certainly realized already (though not to the extent they one day would realize) that the valley would not readily accept any development that clearly might damage the area’s looks or threaten its cleanliness.
Besides (and perhaps more importantly), it is the nature of successful developers that they know what uses can be sold to a community for a given piece of land.
So the pressure on Ojai was not for industrial expansion. Predictably, and true to the forecasts, it was for residential development.
And what was learned by valleyites as the proposals for various subdivisions came in was that many developers, while they obviously agreed that the Ojai should be developed residentially if at all, had their own ideas about the location, type and density of housing that was desirable.
In many instances, also, county government bodies had ideas, that differed from Ojai’s.
Proposals came into the county or the City of Ojai for cluster-housing developments such as apartment buildings, trailer parks and condominiums, in addition to the more standard (and, for valleyites, more acceptable) tract subdivisions.
And what was built was bought as people settled on the valley as a place to retire to, or as a place in which to escape the haphazard and oppressive development of metropolitan areas and find joy again in nature, or as a place, quite simply, which was close enough to the office in Ventura and had available housing.
Action in the county
Of the two types of proposals — those for developments either within the City of Ojai or on unincorporated territory — the more important ones, were those for county land.
(Ultimately, the developments that were proposed and carried out within the city had, and will have, greater impact on the long-range future of the valley. But that is another story. The proposed county developments were more significant at the beginning of the decade.)
The proposals for the development of unincorporated land forced the city to look about itself; forced a renewed realization that what happened in any part of the valley affected the whole of it.
Therefore, the City of Ojai joined residents of the outlying areas in their concern when, for instance: the 121-acre G-Z Ranch was sold for possible industrial development in 1962; when a 40-acre, 356-unit mobile home park was planned for the south slope of Krotona hill in 1964; when a $3 million subdivision of 38 homes was proposed for the Dennison Grade in 1966.
These developments were seen as undesirable by Ojaians. County supervisors, though, were not so partisan. Ultimately, the developments were not carried out because: in the case of the G-Z Ranch, plans were never presented (the area now, however, is being considered as a site for a mobile home park); in the case of the Krotona mobile home park, supervisors refused a permit; and in the case of the Dennison tract, supervisors placed what amounted to economically prohibitive conditions on the use permit.
Supervisors were not without political motivations in arriving at their decisions. One factor in their decision-making was the public interest in the issues shown by Ojaians.
Valley-ites had discovered a weapon they could use to fight unwanted developments.
It was a weapon that would be used many times during the decade — force met with force, the complexities of back-room politics met with the straightforward simplicity (and sometimes, the simplistics) of an indignant populace, the nebulous but undeniable pressure for change met with the rage of frustrated, and bitter protectionist citizenry.
The fact that public outrage was quite often a negative weapon — negative in the sense that it was nothing other than reactionary — seemed to go unnoticed by many people. Public demonstrations were (and are) justified as the people forcing an unresponsive and sometimes devious government to respond to the public’s desires to preserve Ojai. Partly, they were that. But partly, too, they were an expression of a conscience that knows it has waited too long before speaking out; and an expression of frustrated isolationism.
But if public outrage was sometimes negative, it was also, at times, positive — to the extent that no other course of action was available to the people.
And the best examples of relatively positive outrage were the Battle for the freeway and six years later, the Battle of the scenic highway.
Both battles, of course, were centered around the desirability of having a major highway running along the valley’s floor in the area of Ojai. But the battles differed insofar as the sensitivity of the opponent was concerned — his sensitivity to the feelings and the do-or-die dedication of the valley-ites. (The proponent, naturally, was the state.)
There’s been a change
During the Battle for the Freeway, the state’s champion, the Division of Highways, was as insensitive in his proposal as he was intractable in his stand—at first.
Six years later, however, the Division of Highways showed considerably more restraint, more willingness to compromise, as it pushed for the adoption of a mutually agreeable route for a scenic highway. In fact, it urged the City of Ojai to protect itself by planning a “corridor of beauty” for the route.
(Late in 1969, the Div. of Highways’ handling of Ojai would finally be directly opposite to what is was earlier. The division would request the city to hold a public hearing on the proposed traffic loop in the downtown area before—before—the state arrived at a recommended route. This so that the state could know the feelings of Ojaians before they spent the time and money on possibly objectionable route studies.)
Residents of the valley, however, showed no such inclination toward large compromise in the scenic highway issue. Their determination was as steadfast, their views as adamant, as they had been when the freeway was discussed.
The frustration and even anger of highway commissioners was apparently complete when valleyites reared up at them this second time, over the scenic highway; for, from their point of view, they were pressing only for a type of highway which the valley had determined years before was acceptable.
In the Battle for the Freeway, then, it was nothing less than the State of California that was the force pressing on the valley from the outside for change.
The Division of Highways, with its tendency to see beauty as a straight line between two points, saw the need for a freeway to Los Angeles by way of an inland route. The valley’s floor was not only a conveniently flat roadbed; it was also the route indicated in the state’s master plan for highway development.
This plan, the state’s engineers explained, was drawn with an eye toward the future needs of the target area (i.e., its projected population growth) as well as with an eye toward convenient traffic flow throughout the state.
It would be a freeway to serve anticipated needs. But since a freeway promotes development in addition to serving it, the valley was, inevitably, to be “opened up.”
There was never any question about whether it would be built. The state had its prerogatives, after all. The battle was over the route it would follow.
The Division of Highways, to the amazement of Ojaians, believed that it should pass through the City of Ojai. In 1960, residents viewed posted drawings that showed no less than 15 alternate routes through the city, some of them along Ojai Ave through the downtown area.
It is an understatement to say that residents’ feelings ran high.
The Ojai City Council, under the leadership of Mayor Robert Lagomarsino (now State Senator) was urged to protest. Certainly, the council would have done so of its own accord.
Of the many alternatives proposed by the state, the majority of Ojai citizens, recognizing that some route would be adopted, favored a route to the south of the city, along Creek Rd. Next in preference was the Ventura River bed route through Meiners Oaks.
It was this second alternate that the council urged the state, saying that a freeway was not needed through Ojai.
The public was quick to sign a petition that endorsed the council’s resolution.
On September 1, 1960, residents turned out in force for a meeting of state engineers and the public at Matilija Junior High. Engineers were insistent that the projected traffic volume of the city made a city route necessary. The audience disagreed.
No decision was made, of course, and residents left the meeting with the disturbing feeling that the state might not respond to their desires.
River route
Subsequently, the council formed a Freeway Study Group of selected citizens with the aim of providing the state with a more thoroughly considered opinion from Ojai residents. This group, too, recommended the river route after two months of study.
In May of 1961, the state announced that it would delay route adoption in order to give it more thought.
And a year later, in May of 1962, the state opted for the river route. (In addition to being the route desired by valley residents, it was also the cheapest.)
Residents were elated. In a figurative sense, at least, handshakes were passed all around, congratulatory.
Public sentiment clearly was a weapon that could be used to determine the future.
Somewhat determine it. The city was left intact, but the freeway, nevertheless, was now a reality. And the freeway, as a force, would promote an urbanized valley at least as much as it served it.
