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.
Review of the Sixties — Part 3
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.
A review of the Sixties — Part 2
The following article first appeared in the Wednesday, December 24, 1969 edition of “The Ojai Valley News” on the front page. It is reprinted here with their permission.
A review of the Sixties — Part 2
How the Ojai valley has changed
(How has Ojai valley changed in the last decade? Reporter Gary Hachadourian scanned the Ojai Valley News front pages — over 1,000 of them — between 1960 and 1970 to come up with some answers. This is the second in a series of eight articles.)
by Gary Hachadourian
The urbanization of the Ojai Valley in the Sixties was the result of a combination of forces. True, the City of Ojai took many steps which determined, partially, the direction it wanted urbanization to take. But the community was playing a losing game. Growth was inevitable; growth was occurring.
Urbanization was forced in other ways. The City of Ojai — as most California cities — was living under an economic system that forced it to accept and even welcome development of an admittedly questionable variety in order to raise tax money to meet constantly increasing operating costs. Ojai was forced to develop in order to keep from “going broke.” (This particular “force” will be a subject in a later article.)
The changing makeup of the community was another force. A town is what its people are. A community can be no greater than the men and citizens who control its destiny.
The personality of the valley is kaleidoscopic. Its elemental beauty and peace draws all types. We’ll attempt a description. Nothing specific. Just the spirit of the place, for it simultaneously invited urbanization and helped to determine the direction it would take.
Moon nest here
First, we are a self-conscious community. We are landlocked by mountains on three sides. We are endlessly conscious that we live in a very beautiful place — the “center of the universe.” The Chumash Indians also felt that way, for in their language “Ojai” means that the moon nests here. Many residents feel that the sun does. also.
The news stories of the Sixties are filled with congratulatory quotations which say, in essence: “aren’t we wonderful to deserve all this.” There was something aristocratic in our deference to outsiders.
The community’s intimate relationship with nature produced a stern protectionist attitude. The love felt for the valley’s natural beauty was real, because most Ojaians were recently transplanted from city-like environments. They knew that soul-saving open spaces were fast disappearing and deserved to be preserved. They knew their valley was vulnerable to the insistent demands of developers who think of land as money.
Most Ojaians of the Sixties seemed well aware that the valley, lying close to the industrial and commercial centers of the county, is a natural target for extensive — and intensive — residential development. Thus, the community exhibited on occasion an isolationist sentiment. As one letter to the editor said: “let’s pound stakes across the highway at the Y.”
But the community as a whole was prepared to compromise . . . and channel the growth. (Valleyites are also red-blooded capitalists. What else should they be? In this country that’s how money is made and in many cases that’s how they earned the living that brought them a home and acreage with a view of the mountains.)
But, there was a difference between capitalism of the Philistines and the capitalism of Ojaians. The Philistines wanted property because it developed into money, while Ojaians wanted money in order to support property. That’s why seldom do the people who live here treat their land badly.
All this leads to an inescapable and stifling contradiction. It preys on the mind: How can Ojaians deny rights to outsiders that they grant to themselves? How can they think of themselves as the owners of their particular parcel while at the same time acting as overseers of the rest?
How, though, if land is currency, can you rightfully keep outsiders out of the market? This contradiction, in spite of all the restrictive planning, was not answered in the Sixties.
You can’t blame the oldtimers. They came to the valley by choice, for what it offered them. Those who would come in the future would do so more out of necessity, needing space and bringing their conveniences with them. So, if land is currency, there was no way to keep the newcomers out. Restriction planning was not enough.
The area has another characteristic that could be self-defeating. Because of the delight residents feel in living here, Ojaians tend to view themselves as the vanguard contingent of a new urban civilization, a community charged with the heavy responsibility of setting an example of how to live in the suburbs.
They may be right, too. But overconfidence can be self-defeating. Overconfidence can mean a dropping of one’s guard — and the community did that on occasion in the Sixties. Thus the apathy on many occasions when the troops failed to march in the Battle to Preserve Ojai.
These characteristics had a great bearing on what happened in the valley from 1960 to 1970. In fact, they largely determined it.
(The next article places in perspective the events in the urbanization of Ojai Valley during the past 10 years.)
The Sixties in Ojai — Part 1
The following article first appeared in the Sunday, December 21, 1969 edition of “The OJAI VALLEY NEWS” on the front page. The article is reprinted here with their permission.
The Sixties in Ojai — Part 1
How has Ojai changed? Valley’s been urbanized
by Gary Hachadourian
Ten short days from now the decade of the Sixties will have ended.
How have the Sixties affected Ojai Valley?
What changes have taken place here in ten years?
The end of a decade is a convenient time to ask long-range questions because people think in units of ten; January 1, 1970, will seem like a new beginning.
It’s a time that’s convenient for pausing and reflecting.
But it’s also a very appropriate time to ask questions of the long-range variety since it’s always being said that things don’t happen overnight, and a decade certainly isn’t overnight.
See trends
Ten years is a long enough time to take a look at and get a good idea of trends.
In the case of a community, a sufficient number of things should have happened in ten years so that some statement can be made concerning where that town has been, what its concerns were, what its problems were, and, most importantly, where it’s going.
What a city does in one decade determines to a great extent what will happen in the next decade.
Well, has anything happened in Ojai during the Sixties?
Views differ
Your reporter has met a number of people who don’t live in the valley but who visit here regularly and say, “The thing I love about this place is that it hasn’t changed.”
He has met people who have been absent from the valley for a number of years and then have returned to find it, in their opinion, “Just like it was the last time I was here.”
On the other hand, the reporter is friendly with a lot of people who have lived in the valley throughout the Sixties; and he must smile fondly when he says he knows a few people have lived in the Chumash Indian’s Valley of the Nesting Moon for a lot longer than ten years.
These people don’t see the valley as being the same. In fact, they see great changes.
The things they say most frequently are, “I’m afraid for this city, Gary,” or, “I just don’t like what I see going on.”
What’s happened
So what has happened? Physically, tangibly, what changes have taken place since January 1, 1960?
Who’s right — the visitors or the old-timers?
They’re both right.
It’s true that when you compare the amount of actual development that has taken place in Ojai with the amounts that have taken place in other cities — the cities many of the visitors came from — not too much has happened in the valley.
A significant amount of development was carried out in the western end of Ojai’s downtown. Also, a shopping center was constructed at the “Y”, and a hospital and various other office buildings and professional centers.
Otherwise, little
As for the rest, it was residential development; and when you compare the residential development level in the valley with what occurred in other areas of Ventura County — Thousand Oaks and Camarillo, for instance — it really wasn’t too much.
During the Sixties, the population of the valley from Casitas Springs to Upper Ojai rose from about 15,000 to a little under 22,000. This is a healthy jump, but not a staggering one when you consider that professional planners have said the population would more than double to better than 45,000 by 1985.
During this same period, the population of Ojai has risen from 4,700 to 5,800, close to 25 percent. But still, that’s only 1,100 people, and a total population of 5,800 is a far cry from the 15,000 that anticipated by planners by 1985 (in an area between Maricopa Road and Gorham Road — slightly larger than the present city limits).
So it’s true that when you compare Ojai with other areas, growth here has been a little bit here and a little bit there — hard for a visitor to see.
Something crucial
But it’s also true that something crucial has happened in the valley during the past ten years. In the end, the old-timers are more right than the visitors in their assessment of the decade.
They can smell something in the air beside a whiff of smog, occasionally. Since they’ve been here for many years, they can sense any change in the trend of things.
What happened was much more subtle than physical development. But it was no less real.
Became urbanized
What happened was that the valley became urbanized.
Much will be made of this term — urbanization — as your reporter sets down what he thinks were the thematic occurrences in Ojai since 1960. So he’d better describe what he means by the term.
Urbanization is the process that changed Ojai from a rural town to a suburban center. It was as much a change in the thinking of the valley residents as it was a change in the physical development of the area.
When people start complaining about dogs running loose, horses in the streets, that ‘s urbanization as much as building apartment houses is.
Natural process
Urbanization really was an entirely natural process in the valley. The 7,000 or so people who have moved in since 1960 were, after all, essentially city dwellers. Many of them moved here simply because they needed housing that was within commuting distance to the office in Oxnard or Ventura.
As those cities began to fill up, other areas began to develop to accommodate the overflow. The valley was one of those areas.
Of course, many of the people who moved in came by choice as well as necessity, wanting to live in a pretty place that was quieter, more restful, and more personal than an urban center. Even so, they brought with them a different type of thinking.
The point is that as the population explosion began to make its effect on the valley, the thinking of the majority of the residents began to change. The majority’s tastes changed. Its thoughts on what an appropriate future was began to change.
Small wonder that the old-timers feared what they sensed was happening. They, the people who would fight tooth and nail to keep the valley a rural paradise, were becoming more in the minority.
Lack of control
But it wasn’t only that the valley was developing that worried these old-timers. What they really feared — and what the reporter fears, he should add — was that the direction of growth wasn’t being sufficiently controlled.
Ojai, as many people who are only occasional visitors know, is a beautiful place. More significantly, it has the type of beauty that can bring in money by being left as it is.
Those mountains that rise up less than a mile from the center of the city are the impressive boundaries of a national forest. There’s a lake nearby and many parks and many miles of riding and hiking trails, not to mention golf courses.
Ojai obviously should be a town that is a recreational oasis for the real city dwellers to the south of here, in the Los Angeles area. It should be an oasis for its own residents, most of whom have chosen to live here in order to escape the oppressive mode of living in other Southern California cities.
Stress planning
This article, which will be published as a series over the next few weeks, will seek to identify what the city’s problems have been during the Sixties as far as planning its future and implementing its plan goes.
In that vein, the reporter will discuss what the combination of forces was that brought about urbanization. In his mind, there were three basic forces at work:
* Forces exerted on the valley from the outside — essentially the population explosion.
* Forces that worked from within the valley — i.e., the need to urbanize and develop in a chosen direction in order to prevent the valley’s being developed haphazardly, at the whim of developers. Emphasis in this section will be on what type of planning the city actually did and what steps it took to make itself an oasis for tourists and its own residents.
The ‘system’
* Forces that prevented the city from controlling the future as much as it would have liked to. Ojai had a personality that was sometimes self-defeating. Also, it lived — and continues to live — under an economic “system” that made it difficult and even impossible to act in accordance with its desires all the time.
The reporter will also discuss what he thinks was a sterile and self-defeating philosophy of government during these years. As will soon become clear, the reporter is eager to shout congratulations for the steps the city’s government has taken to identify and preserve the character of Ojai, to channel its growth.
But he will point out also that a philosophy of government that stresses the right of a property owner to develop his property as he sees fit, rather than a balance between those rights and community responsibilities, is a philosophy that’s incapacitating and essentially murderous to a community.
Lack of imagination
In some instances, he feels the city planners and elected officials have shown an abysmal lack of imagination and guts. While government has taken some life-giving steps, it has also served as the city’s undertaker.
Obviously, the reporter will not try to hide his feelings. He will try for objectivity, but not detachment.
Why? Because Ojai is important to him. It’s important because it’s his chosen home, but also because it is a unique town and has the potential to become something different, something more habitable for human beings than most other cities.
He should explain that he has lived here for less than two years, and so hasn’t experienced all that he will talk about. His factual information was gained by going through the 1,000 or so issues of the Ojai Valley News that have been published twice weekly since 1960. Also, there have been talks with many people.
The reporter’s particular interpretation of the facts stems from the belief that even though he didn’t live through everything he’ll write about, the type of thinking that people in the valley do hasn’t changed.
To a great extent, the reporter has undertaken this project to gain knowledge about what happened before he arrived in Ojai. He wanted to do it in order to gain a fuller understanding of what Ojai is, where it’s been, and, most importantly, where it’s going.
Examining a decade allows you to do these things — and that’s what we’ll undertake beginning in the next issue.
Beautification Month
The following article was first published in the Winter 2018 (VOLUME 36 NUMBER 4) issue of the “Ojai Valley Guide” magazine that is published by the “Ojai Valley News”. With their permission, the article is reprinted here. It ran on pages 154 and 155 in the magazine.
LOOK BACK IN OJAI 1969
Beautification Month
By
Drew Mashburn
Contributed on behalf of the Ojai Valley Museum
In October 1969, the Ojai Chamber of Commerce spearheaded a “Beautification for Better Business Campaign.” I had graduated from Nordhoff High School only a few months before and must tell you, at the time, my business was chasing after beautiful women and cars. I could not have cared less about sprucing up things around the valley, except for a good wash and waxing of my 1961 Austin Healy “Bug Eye” Sprite to, hopefully, impress beautiful young ladies.
So, moving on, I was ignorant of this cleanup drive.
Read the rest of the article in the Ojai Magazine.
Police mull action to ‘clean up’ park
The following article first appeared in the Sunday, June 4, 1967 edition of the “Ojai Valley News” on the front page. It is reprinted here with their permission
Hippie set
Police mull action to ‘clean up’ park
Ojai police, nettled by a series of provocative acts attributed to members of the Hippie set, were mulling retaliatory action Friday.
Chief James D. Alcorn said his “phone has been ringing off the hook,” with calls from citizens who are plainly disturbed by what they claim are impudent reflections on recent narcotics violations.
Most recent incident was the posting of a sign near the arches fronting Civic Park, proclaiming “Things go better with Pot.” Pot is a slang word for marijuana.
Alcorn said private citizens have also complained about the posting of a routed redwood sign with the capital letters, O-V-D-A, which reportedly stand for “Ojai Valley Drug Addicts.”
He said some of the Hippies hold the sign on their laps as they sit on the wall fronting the park.
Civic Park is a private park, administered by Ojai Civic Association. Alcorn said trustees of the association have been exploring ways of combating the situation, but thus far have failed to find any answers.
In recent discussion of the problem by the Ojai City Council, City Attorney Duane Lyders warned the council that restrictive actions would raise questions of free speech and assembly – thorny issues of civil rights.
As a private park, however, authorities have indicated there might be ways of cleaning up the situation.
The Hippie set has used the front area of the park as a rallying point for some time,, according to Alcorn, but the situation apparently worsened earlier this year when Hippies from coastal cities staged the first of two “Love-ins.”
The first event came off without incident. Barefoot youths with flowers behind their ears strummed on guitars, ate picnic lunches and proclaimed “Love” to all who would listen. It was similar to events conducted quietly in Los Angeles, San Francisco and most recently in an eastern city.
The second “Love-in”, however, had slightly different overtones. Police arrested two visitors on charges of possessing marijuana. One was a girl from Glendale, the other a boy from Los Angeles.
Observers, however, noted that some of the visitors were not so young and some were estimated to be only juveniles who supported the bizarre costumes and deportment of Hippies years older.
Alcorn said the situation was a delicate one. “We have to be careful how we handle this thing,” he warned, “publicity is what most of these people want.”
He said the most his officers could do at present was to see that no laws are broken.