The Crown Jewel of the Pacific Urban Hierarchy:
The U. S. Navy
We started this chapter off with city-building. That discussion asserted among other observations that cities in the city-building “phase” highly prioritize economic development and that, by its nature, city-building is closely associated with our third driver, the competitive (regional/national) hierarchy. Left unsaid in that discussion, but now abundantly apparent city-building generally involves ED strategies that tap into either/both building the industry/sector jurisdictional economic base or some form of citizen-attraction to increase city size, markets, etc. The latter strategy is, of course, complicated by the reality some cities “enjoy” heavy population inflows due to factors over which they have little control.
After 1900 Pacific western cities were in “growth mode” and the Pacific/West regional hierarchy was emerging. San Francisco, 417000 in 1910 was king of the mountain, followed by LA (319000), Seattle (237,000) and Portland (207000). In that decade events conspired to offer a “crown jewel” from the federal government to a Pacific port city. The crown jewel was the headquarters for a brand-spanking new Pacific fleet. Competition for naval facilities and bases, triggered by the prospective opening of the Panama Canal (August, 1914), also overlapped with World War I. The canal was a game-changer. Each Pacific Coast city considered it an opportunity to diversify their economy and to grow their economic base. The race was on!
In the competition that emerged a sophisticated ED strategy was pursued by the above port cities. Labeled “Fortress California”, a landmark work by R. Lotchin, the strategy was already a time-honored strategy to positively affect federal decision-making to land some federal resource, facility, or grant/ investment. More than twenty-five years would pass (1937) before the crown jewel was awarded—to San Francisco. In the interim the port cities of California competed to attract the jewel and the associated facilities that came with the Pacific fleet. The ultimate winner in that competition was a city not on the above list, a city less than one-tenth the size of San Francisco—a city that forged a “fortress” strategy with which the other cities could, or would, not effective compete. If the “Goliath” was San Francisco, the “David” was San Diego (less than 40000). Given the prominent role of the federal government in western development, the “fortress” strategy could potentially be applied to the quest for any number of federal or state resources. Although not yet in its “activist” period, the federal government offered sub-state economic developers a viable approach to achieve ED jurisdictional goals. The lessons learned from San Diego therefore are just as valuable now as they were then.
San Diego’s “Fortress” Strategy
The Fleet’s commanding officer, Admiral Dewey, initially rejected a southern California location for his new fleet; Seattle’s excellent harbor was the apple of his eye. One could not discount the meteoric rise of Los Angeles—although its harbor politics were convoluted at best. Competition for fleet headquarters, however, proved to be a major league “head-fake”. The real plums were the various facilities and naval bases associated with the fleet (that’s where the jobs and contracts were). Most of those facilities had nothing to do with the fleet headquarters.
The initial competition seemed to be between San Francisco, Seattle and upstart Los Angeles, the ultimate victor was none of the above. The first Pacific naval base was built in San Diego. Considerably smaller, less well known, its natural advantages were substantial: “The Border City enjoyed proximity to the Panama Canal, a mild climate, and the whole population was united to convince the Secretary (of War) that San Diego was by far the best site for Naval Bases on the Pacific” (R. Lotchin 30). San Diego got its economic development big boy pants on, and outhustled its major league competition. Outhustling meant developing a sophisticated “fortress California” naval attraction strategy that had the audacity to bypass the Navy and the fleet commander, going directly to their boss.
Central to San Diego’s success was the election of former Chamber director, William Ketter, a Democrat, to Congress in 1911. “During his tenure in the House of Representatives … the greatest available naval prize was the main home base of the Pacific fleet… Ketter did not openly aim for this trophy … Instead [he] concentrated publically on smaller, less dramatic and newsworthy projects. As any Navy man knew, enough of these modest installations could eventually become a major one” (R. Lotchin 28). Ketter, relying on the Chamber for local leadership, worked the House, the Senate, the Naval Department—and the Corps of Engineers who would be responsible for the harbor itself. When Democrat Wilson became President in 1913, Ketter appealed directly to both Secretary Daniels and Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt. With materials and research prepared by the Chamber, Ketter countered San Francisco’s initial advantage, isolated Los Angeles Republican-led advances, and opposed the Navy’s preference for a Northwest location.
The key first step was to secure approval and funding for the Corps to dredge the harbor—making it competitive with other Pacific coast harbors. Shortly after, a coaling station, a fuel oil station, and a radio station were approved for San Diego. The Chamber played a critical role in identifying and securing sites for several of these facilities. Land was donated to the Navy in each instance. A marine base (the nucleus for present-day Camp Pendleton), a naval air station, a naval training station, a naval hospital were subsequently built—all by 1917–then the big boy announcement in 1919: San Diego’s designation as a “Naval Operating Base”, followed by, in 1921, a naval supply depot, a submarine repair base, and designation as “Eleventh Naval District Headquarters”. With success in each small project, Ketter reduced the cost of establishing the main facility in San Diego. San Diego, its economic development and congressional leadership in close alliance, had sustained a decade-long, single-minded target of acquiring naval facilities. In so doing it pioneered how to implement a “fortress-defense industry economic development strategy”.
In this single-minded pursuit the community, its business community and political leaderships were consistently supportive; “The press, city government, Harbor Commission, civic clubs, labor unions, political parties and the public stood solidly behind the courting of the Navy”. The Harbor Commission (formed in 1928) was the culmination and physical expression of a united community effort to remove politics from economic development and concentrate upon clear, defined, and specific objectives by doing whatever seemed necessary to “close the deal”. “The Harbor Commission possessed tremendous power. It could plan and to an extent regulate development of the heart of the city and thereby extract concessions in return for privileges granted, especially to the military…. The multiplication of navy piers, anchorage grounds, base sites and turning basins in one part of the harbor was echoed in the proliferation of parks, yacht harbors, industrial sites, harbor drives and airport runways in another.” (R. Lotchin 36-6) If Portland and Seattle developed port authorities to establish public control over harbor development, San Diego did so to achieve its Privatist economic development strategy.
The most important reason for the placement of what became the main home base in San Diego was that the city let [the Navy] put it there. For the most part the city held veto power … simply by virtue of its control over its own waterfront, which was almost entirely municipal property …. Almost everything the services got in San Diego came from enthusiastic city offers and much local brokerage of critical matters. (R. Lotchin 40-1)
The city added its own related capital investment and monies, dredged on its own dime, using the fill for its airport, and then built piers and facilities to attract commercial uses, while facilitating access by rail to the various facilities. In the years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, San Diego continued its focused economic development strategy, even more tightly weaving the city into the Naval and War Department’s decision-making fabric. Adding still more naval and air facilities by relocating facilities in competing cities. It culminated in the 1935 San Diego World’s Fair, which promoted the accumulated assets in which the city sheltered the entire Pacific Battle Fleet.
In 2015, San Diego is the 8th largest city in the U.S. and California’s 2nd.
Fortress Strategy and Competitive Urban Hierarchy
As described by Lotchin, early twentieth century Pacific Coast cities (especially California) focused their city building and chamber-style boosterism to forge a distinctive multi-decade economic development- growth strategy based upon “close ties between the city and the military”. By linking municipal-state economic development efforts to national defense policy (and war) these cities developed a sizeable economic agglomeration for their jurisdiction by acquiring military/governmental spending, facilities and personnel. In each of these pre-World War II Pacific cities, within its booster-competitive-Chamber policy nexus, a network of business, political and national bureaucratic alliances were established sufficient to obtain the desired military-related facilities/spending.
The core of these initiatives was an early military-industrial complex, an “Iron Triangle” of military/governmental bureaucracies, congressional delegations/committees and municipal EDOs. Bureaucratically, Chambers provided leadership, liaison, and staff-coordination with municipal/ county/ state, general business community, key private actors, media, and the Washington political/bureaucratic establishment. They arranged for incentives and developed formal programs support/implementation of the various projects.
San Diego was not the only Pacific city to do this. San Francisco competed intensely, and intelligently as well. The San Francisco chamber actually received a municipal subsidy for its normal expenses and an extra one for its promotional activities. Elsewhere chamber-government ties were especially close and their collaboration in military matters quite thick. The chambers’ courtship of the soldiers and sailors was institutionalized rather than improvisational. Although the chambers featured military affairs committees, by the Second World War the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had a committee for both military and naval affairs and, in addition, published a weekly newsletter devoted solely to civil and military aviation. (R. Lotchin 13-15)
Despite its initial lead and genuine desire, San Francisco was unable to leverage its size and legacy to develop its harbor, San Francisco diffused its focus, simultaneously trying to satisfy its Progressive business through comprehensive planning, neighborhoods, arts and commerce, encompassed around an expanded City Beautiful initiative. Harbor and naval base attraction, a more Privatist-style economic development, failed to connect to Progressive business elites and ethnic voters. Decentralization of political life to wards and civic improvement neighborhoods diffused city hall’s ability to develop a sustained, focused effort on naval base attraction. Los Angeles, on the other hand, could not muster the sustained intensity of a community-supported commitment to the Naval Department made by San Diego. “The Navy certainly did not occupy the central place in the City of the Angels that it did in San Francisco, San Diego or Vallejo” (R. Lotchin).
Against this backdrop, the reader may be amazed to learn that San Francisco achieved formal designation of Pacific Fleet home port (1937)—only to lose that to Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor in 1940.
Fortress California has become so deeply impressed in our understanding of the early rise of California’s cities that one might think these cities invented the strategy—they didn’t. San Antonio[i], unequivocally, engaged in a defense-based economic development strategy essentially similar to Lotchin’s California cities—but in the 1880’s (Charleston around 1900 as well—there were others). What distinguished the Pacific states use of this strategy is that it truly was a decentralized region-wide strategy used by municipalities to competing for position in the Pacific urban hierarchy. The First World War unleashed a period of great prosperity as war production demanded western resources (fishing, mining, lumber, agriculture), and prompted shipbuilding for a newly established (1919) Pacific fleet and a new, but struggling, aircraft industry as well. The insecurity of each city’s business elites increased as did their perceived need for growth and regional dominance by acquiring facilities associated with the Pacific fleet/military for their metropolitan area: “This naval/air realignment triggered economic war up and down the West Coast.” (R. Lotchin 6)
By the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, California cities had created a well-entrenched pattern of pursuing military wealth in order to create urban greatness…. Each city had become a metropolitan-military complex by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Each had long-standing political ties between civilian and military sectors as well as a huge military or potentially military economic investment to protect. Each had institutionalized its union with the military through political institutions like the naval and military affairs committees of the chambers of commerce, city governments and educational devices and had invented pageants (events) to link the emotional life of the metropolis to the fate of the military…. and (these cities) competed with each other impetuously for the spoils of war (R. Lotchin 1-2).
[1] Colorado 1876.The following became states AFTER 1889: North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1989), Idaho, Wyoming, Utah (1890), Oklahoma (1907), New Mexico, Arizona (1912) and Alaska, Hawaii (1958).
[1] Check out Richard Wade, the Urban Frontier (University of Chicago Press, 1959) which covers Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis.
[1] For a view counter to Barth’s instant cities see Lawrence Larsen and Robert Branyan, “The Development of an Urban Civilization on the Frontier of the American West”, Societas, Volume 1, Winter, 1971, pp. 33-50.
[1] California in 1890 was 49%, Colorado (45%), Utah and Washington (35%). See Raymond A. Mohl, The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age 1860-1920, (Arlington Heights Illinois, Harlan Davidson Inc., 1985), Table 2, p. 11; and Oliver Knight, Toward an Understanding of the Western Town“, The Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 4, Number 1 (January 1973), pp. 37-38.
[1] A stop on the Chisholm Trail, its initial city builders included Buffalo Bill Mathewson (not Buffalo Bill Cody).
[1] Home of the Cherokees and the Choctaw Nation, the nickname “Sooner State” comes from those early settlers who illegally had entered into the Territory and settled down in the “choicest” of sites.
[1] San Francisco port centered on a state-operated immigrant center (300,000 Chinese 1850-1882). Chinese immigration was legal (the Burlingame Treaty) although limited (non-citizenship).
[1] WWW.HistoryLink.org — the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.
[1] A Progressive leader in port legislation Virgil G. Bogue drafted waterfront plans for Seattle, Grays Harbor and Tacoma; his motivation to create coordinated public ownership “as practiced by European ports”.
[1] Some examples are: Seattle (1911), Grays Harbor (1911), Vancouver Washington (1912), Tacoma (1918), Bellingham (1920), Everett Washington (1917), Kalama Washington (1921), Longville Washington (1921), Olympia (1922), Longville Washington (1922), Anacortes Washington (1926)
[1] Could someone explain the Joshua thing to me? I guess oranges don’t grow on Joshua trees?
[1] The states are Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada.
Chinatown (1974) produced by Roman Polanski, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, tells Los Angeles side of the tale. The Library of Congress cited this film as “culturally, historically … significant” so it must be true.[1]
[1] The inspiration and political pressure for the highway is credited to two businessmen, Cyrus Avery of Tulsa and John Woodruff of Springfield MO, working within the American Association of State Highway and Transportation. Route 66 was intended to replace three existing highways. Taking advantage of 1916 federal legislation that authorized a federal role in highway construction, its original purpose was to simply connect the numerous small towns along the route to the national transportation system/economy.
[i] Boulder Springs embraced it in the post-World War II period, but so did Houston and so many other cities.
Ron W. Coan 