Table Of ContentT-wo Califomias
The Truth About
the Split-State Movement
TWO
CALIFORNIAS
Michael DiLeo &
Eleanor Smith
Island Press
Covelo, California
Copyright© 1983 by Michael DiLeo and Eleanor Smith
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
means without permission in writing from the publisher. Address: Island Press,
Star Route 1, Box 38, Covelo, California 95428.
Edited by Bruce Colman
Designed by Nancy Austin
Cover drawing by Bill Oetinger
Cover photo by Frank Wing
Copy edited by Mary Lou VanDeventer
Composed in lTC Italia and Paladium by Ann Flanagan Typography, Berkeley, and
Patrick Miller, Berkeley. Printed and bound by Consolidated Printers, Berkeley.
Library of Congress Cataloging In Publication Data
DiLeo, Michael, 1946-
Two Californias.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Decentralization in government-California.
2. California-Politics and government. 3. Regionalism
California. 4. Water resources development-California.
I. Smith, Eleanor, 1954- II. Title.
JS45l.C25D54 1983 320.9794 83-307
ISBN 0-933280-16-5 (pbk.)
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Foreword 1
Barbara Dean
Preface 3
Chronology of Split-State Movements 6
1
The Golden State, 1820-1914 9
2
Los Angeles Rising, 1914-1982 45
3
A Tale of Two Cultures 73
The Two Califomias Photo Quiz 94
4
Water Politics and the Third California 109
5
Imagine Two Californias 159
6
California Fusion-Healing the Golden State 199
Notes 229
Bibliography 233
Index 239
Fore-word
hen Jeremy Joan Hewes, a long time contributing editor to Island
Press, suggested that we do a book on the concept of two Cali
fornias, the idea spun through our editorial offices provocatively.
At the time (spring '82), California was gearing up for a vote
on building the Peripheral Canal, and splitting the state in two
was a possibility that appeared with increasing frequency (and seriousness) in
the media. It popped up even more often around Covelo, the small, Northern
California town that is the site of the Island Press editorial offices. If California
voters approved construction of the canal, which seemed likely at the time, the
Press offices stood an excellent chance of joining the rest of Round Valley at
the bottom of a lake. California water interests' next move would almost inev
itably be to build a dam on the Eel River at Dos Rios, in order to keep the canal
full.
Split the state? Not a bad idea, from the standpoint of a frustrated and
seemingly powerless Northerner.
We were fortunate that Eleanor Smith and Michael DiLeo came forward to
write Two Californias. Both are talented researchers and agreed to keep an
open mind about splitting the state while they wrote the book.
Eleanor, who was born in Orange County, spent most of her childhood on
rural Long Island. She moved back to Newport Beach for junior high school,
high school, and college. After graduating from the University of California at
Irvine, in 1976, she moved to the Bay Area and worked as managing editor of
Not Man Apart, published by Friends of the Earth. She left FOE in 1981, and
has since done investigative reporting for a variety of regional and national
magazines. She now lives in Berkeley.
A native New Yorker, Michael graduated from Duke University in North
Carolina in 1968 and migrated to UCLA, where he received his MA in history.
After that, he moved north to the Bay Area and on, for a time, to the rugged
North Coast mountains, where he was active in environmental work. He cur
rently lives in Marin County and writes history and government text books for
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Although an affirmative answer to the split-state question had intriguing
appeal, we felt it was premature. Discussions that went beyond the obvious
one-liners and utopian scenarios had quickly uncovered a startling complexity
of serious issues. We didn't expect Michael and Eleanor to be unbiased (who,
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having lived in this complicated state longer than three weeks, could genuinely
have no opinion on the questions involved?), but we did hope that their biases
would work creatively.
As you will see, that is just what happened. The authors have brought the
extraordinary range of their own experiences to bear. Both have lived long
periods in both parts of California (or, if you will, in both Californias); both
have hands-on experience with some of the difficult environmental issues that
face the state; and both have, in addition, points of view influenced by time
and residence in other parts of the country.
These qualities became increasingly important as the book took shape. An
idea that, on its surface, captures the imagination, became a multi-faceted
metaphor with echoes back into California's history and forward into our
collective future. The urge to split the state raises some very basic questions
about the ways we choose to live together. Or about the ways we choose to
live apart. These questions always remain, in the most fundamental sense, open.
Barbara Dean
Executive Director, Island Press
Covelo
February 1983
Preface
[!]
wo Californias: the idea that a deep rift exists between Northern
and Southern California permeates the folklore of this sprawling
state. Millions of people believe wholeheartedly that there are
two Californias (they are talking about culture). Millions of
other people are convinced that there should be two Californias
(in political terms). Of course, there are countless others who think nothing of
the kind. California as it is and as it should be is something that, like beauty, is
in the eye of the beholder.
Both of us began this book with a strong sense that splitting the state might
actually solve California's problems. In our early research we uncovered a
spate of similar secession movements around the land. Canada, of course, is
besieged by separatist forces in Quebec, where a question of cultural integrity
is involved, and to a lesser extent in the western provinces, where money and
natural resources lie at the heart of the problem.
In the United States there may be a dozen such efforts. Separatism seems to
have become a full-blown craze. In the Florida keys, fishermen have proposed
forming a new state called the Conch Republic. Their biggest gripe appears to
be a roadblock placed on the highway to slow the influx of illegal aliens. This,
say the fishermen, slows only the flow of traffic and the hauling of seafood to
market. In Alaska, some real estate developers have proposed secession to
escape annoying restrictions placed by environmentalists from the Lower
48. Chicano radicals in the Southwest want to form the state of Aztlan from
the area between San Diego and the Platte River. In Texas a movement led by
former state senator Bob Gammage and state representative Dan Kubiak seeks
to create five modestly sized states out of one big one. The idea here is to quin
tuple Texas's relatively meager representation in the US Senate. (This move
ment may technically be the most feasible of all; see chapter 5.) Among the
other proposed new political entities are the Republic of South Jersey, the
Republic of Nantucket, the Republic of Martha's Vineyard, and the Superior
Republic, in the far upper Midwest.
What's going on here? we asked ourselves. Is secession a cop-out, a fad, a
cheap publicity gag, an American atavism left over from the Civil War, or is it
an important political current? Though unqualified to speak on situations in
other states, we have concluded that the North-South split in California is
serious business. We have three reasons for this opinion.
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