I See by the Papers...

Santa Rosa is an optimistic town, and has been since the first trains chugged into Railroad Square in the 1870s. But it's not truly a virtue; that optimism is rooted in our bigshots having relentless ambitions to make us into an economic powerhouse. Someday, in their fever dreams, Santa Rosa will be a great metropolis anchoring the northern end of the Bay Area. True, such growth or clout might not happen tomorrow, but it's surely just over the horizon - or so the town's nabobs have told us again and again.

That may be why the Press Democrat had a fondness for stories predicting Santa Rosa's bonny future. Other newspapers also printed those sorts of articles, usually on special anniversaries such as a town's centennial. But the PD needed no excuse to gaze into a crystal ball and their forecasts would pop up at any time.

I've collected a dozen from the first half of the 20th century (likely there are many more to find) and I love these things; usually they're a mix of whiz-bang gadgets that are nearly magical, loopy ideas culled from science fiction and wild c which sometimes actually did come true. Common threads include flying cars, that television will make us smarter and better people and nobody will really have to work hard. Women's fashions are always going to be very, very strange.

The wildest prediction appeared here earlier in its own article, "SANTA ROSA IN THE YEAR 3000." Author John Tyler Campbell, an attorney who penned the city's first charter and later became a politician and diplomat, predicted in 1913 that a “great upheaval” in the Pacific Ocean would close the Golden Gate Strait. Fortunately, "around the year 1925 Sonoma county built a canal connecting the Russian river to the Petaluma river, through the Laguna, Mark West and Santa Rosa creeks. It was big enough to handle the largest ocean steamships..." Santa Rosa thus became the major seaport on the coast, and in the year 2905 the nation's capitol was moved from Washington D.C. and "built on Taylor mountain after it was graded down to an elevated plateau." Give it a read - it's pretty wacky stuff.

Here's a sample of some of the other futuristic visions that appeared in the Press Democrat: 

The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott

Forget Charles Schulz and Peanuts; forget Luther Burbank and his garden. Forget tourism, with its spas and wine tasting (and for that matter, forget boutique wineries). Santa Rosa and the surrounding area are known for one thing alone - it's the home of the Air Force Academy.

Oh, you say, that's in Colorado Springs - and notice how quickly the name of that city comes to mind - but in 1950 the Academy didn't yet exist and its future location was very much up in the air (sorry), with Santa Rosa among the top contenders. The Chamber of Commerce waged a year-long campaign to bring it here, even though it quickly turned neighbor against neighbor and pitted the city against the county Farm Bureau.

When the new year of 1950 began, the whereabouts of a future Air Force Academy was a much discussed topic nationwide. There were already 150 communities in the running, in part because the search criteria were so broad. Col. Freeman Tandy, chairman of the task force screening possible sites in California, said basic requirements were that it be within 50 miles of a major city, be close to all means of transportation, have utilities available and sport natural beauty. He explained they wanted a place suitable for a university more than an airfield with lots of noisy flight operations.

And there was this: Colonel Tandy said the government expected to spend up to $300M to acquire land and build the campus - the equivalent of spending $3.2 BILLION today. When the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce invited the selection board to come here and look around we can only hope there was no obvious drool on the letter.

A survey team from the Army Corps of Engineers was slated to visit in mid-January but there was one teensy problem: We hadn't settled on a location to show them.

With only three days to spare, the Santa Rosa Chamber met with the Petaluma Chamber and agreed they would offer a site between the cities. "It's now a Sonoma county project," said the Petaluma Chamber.

The property was directly across from modern-day SSU on the east side of Petaluma Hill Road. The Air Force was looking for 9,000 acres and the four square miles would be less than a third of that, so maybe they were counting a large chunk of land on the west side of the road - there was no Rohnert Park at the time, remember. It was pointed out that buildings could be on the scenic slope of Sonoma Mountain and part of the site was "a natural football bowl." Sell the sizzle, not the steak.

When the two guys arrived for the tour, a throng of local poobahs swarmed over them like a pack of dumpster raccoons. Reps from the city and/or Chamber for Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Cotati, Forestville and Sebastopol trailed the caravan driving up and down Petaluma Hill Road and out to Crane Canyon Road - although they couldn't see much because of heavy rain. Then it was off to Santa Rosa and its lush Topaz Room for lunch and fine speeches about how everyone thought it would be the bestest choice the Air Force could ever make. Afterwards they all piled back into cars and went off to see the "Sonoma County Airport tract."

Normally you'd expect it would be the last anyone heard of a project like this; competition was fierce from more prominent cities in California and other states in the West. Then suddenly the North Bay became a top contender because General "Hap" Arnold just happened to die right before the survey crew was here.

The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott