October 17, 1963 (16 pages)

RDMORIAL ‘A BIRTHDAY PLEDGE, RENEWED DEDICATION Four years ago this week ‘we worked through the night to put out the first edition of a new Nevada County newspaper, "The Citizen." Shortly after that, the Citizen merged with the Nugget, and gave up its name in favor of the established and better-known one. But the purposes and policies of the staff remained and still remain, the same, as enunciated in an editorial in that first Citizen. Two occurrences this week reminded us of that fact. This is National Newspaper Week, a time when newspapers across the land take stock of themselves and their place ina free society. And secondly, we worked through the night again this week, to complete our multi-colored FallSpectacular section in good time. It was like "old times". We thought you might enjoy going back with us through a few short years ‘to our beginnings, to find out what we stood for and continue to stand for. So the rest of this editorial will consist of excerpts fromthe Citizen of Oct. 14,. 1953. In order to serve the community we hope to provide pictures and more pictures reporting all the color of Nevada County life; clear, accurate coverage of events and personalities; informed editorial content; for advertisers, a controlled circulation guarantee and great flexibility in layout. We have no editorial axes to grind, but we will speak out when the editor and publisher feel the community interest will be best served. We aim to be a good neighbor-~a citizen worthy of the name. One of the characteristics,.we believe, of a good citizen, is a healthy respect forthe land in which he lives . Because we believe this to be an area particularly endowed with natural beauty we will never hesitate to speak whenever efforts are made to despoil this God-given heritage--no matter how unpopular our stand might be at the moment. * We believe this to be an.area su_premely endowed by manas well as nature, and willresist any attempts to erase anything that remains from our fabled past unless it can be proved that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Weare for those industries that will bring payrolls, people, and economic stability to Nevada County. And, for good measure, we are for good schools, good libraries, good government--and against sin. Most of all, though, we are for you-the reader andthe only true citizen. Our eyes and ears are open, our cameras are focused, to the end that you will find in our pages the Nevada County you know and love. CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY INVESTMENT PAYS DIVIDEND OF SMOG, CLUTTER, FILTH, CONGESTION In building a transportation system to meet the needs of automobiles, we are almost masochistically indulging in failure. We are not meeting the transportation needs of people and their goods. We are helping to cause the physical deterioration of California communities. We have been all too ready to permit a constitutionally protected buréautracy, ‘the State Division’ of Highways, to assume that the psychological predilection of people for their cars justifies the building of a highway system, in lieu of a genuinely economical, efficient and attractive system of mass transport. One thing about cars is certain: give them an inch, and they'll take a mile, right out of the middle of your home town. For example, businessmen wanted the freeways which now ring, bisect, and gut Los Angeles, to » bring business downtown. But those freeways carry a heavy load of traffic not to the downtown merchants, but through and around them to major regional shopping centers in outlying neighborhoods, In the early 1930's 75 percent of the metropolitan area's retail sales took place in downtown Los Angeles. By 1946 this percentage had been reduced to 50 percent and it was down to 18 percent by 1960, And the overall appearance of the area seems to have grown progressively worse with the opening of each new freeway. Yet partly as a tesult of the building of the freeways, Los Angeles County alone must spend about $4 billion on secondary street deficiencies within the next 20 years, with little real hope for a solution to the problems of congestion, or of parking. The experience of Los Angeles is duplicated in some degree in almost every California city. In spending a billion dollars a year we are improving our highways and parking facilities. But in the process we are clogging our city streets, ruining our landscape and subsidizing an uneconomical and inefficent “system” of transport. Without doubt the automobile, in some form ‘or other, will be around for a good many decades. And the automobile willremainthe workhorse of California transpor~tation for some time. But this hardly means that our . cities -that we ourselves -can complacently regard the automobile as the epitome of transportation, or the Division of Highways as the very god of motion. Yet the evidence points to the fact that we have indeed prostrated ourselves, physically and spiritually, before the automobile, andthe autocratic society. See how “S961 ‘LI 19q0190°° -3088nN au’ * ‘py 28eg 7 aBeg’’ the finny monster dominates your life, occupies a large . room of your house, eats up about 13 percent of your income, demolishes the hegemony of your town, manufactures your smog, threatens your park, recklessly sires a profusion of billboards in an already uglified world, invites scattered development. Our blindness regarding transportation isvirtually complete, We rely on the automobile and the highway, we refuse to recognize the destructive effect of either, and our communities have done little to control them. At the same time, the concept of an integrated system of transportation, involving a variety of carriers, seems to be beyond the grasp of most of our leadership. So we spend our billions for cars and highways, vaguely hoping that thereby the old American dream of the open road will someday become a reality. But our investment is really in smog, filth, clutter, and congestion, which so many of us suffer in eerie silence. --Samuel E. Wood and Alfred Heller, from "The Phantom Cities of California”, Illustrations by Osborn/Woods “We rely on the automobile and the highway, we refuse to recognize the destructive effect of either, and our communities have done little to control them.” , me CS Ree er) ee ri. T Matai st , . ees Meee [ , peer ee J

RDMORIAL ‘A BIRTHDAY PLEDGE, RENEWED DEDICATION Four years ago this week ‘we worked through the night to put out the first edition of a new Nevada County newspaper, "The Citizen." Shortly after that, the Citizen merged with the Nugget, and gave up its name in favor of the established and better-known one. But the purposes and policies of the staff remained and still remain, the same, as enunciated in an editorial in that first Citizen. Two occurrences this week reminded us of that fact. This is National Newspaper Week, a time when newspapers across the land take stock of themselves and their place ina free society. And secondly, we worked through the night again this week, to complete our multi-colored FallSpectacular section in good time. It was like "old times". We thought you might enjoy going back with us through a few short years ‘to our beginnings, to find out what we stood for and continue to stand for. So the rest of this editorial will consist of excerpts fromthe Citizen of Oct. 14,. 1953. In order to serve the community we hope to provide pictures and more pictures reporting all the color of Nevada County life; clear, accurate coverage of events and personalities; informed editorial content; for advertisers, a controlled circulation guarantee and great flexibility in layout. We have no editorial axes to grind, but we will speak out when the editor and publisher feel the community interest will be best served. We aim to be a good neighbor-~a citizen worthy of the name. One of the characteristics,.we believe, of a good citizen, is a healthy respect forthe land in which he lives . Because we believe this to be an area particularly endowed with natural beauty we will never hesitate to speak whenever efforts are made to despoil this God-given heritage--no matter how unpopular our stand might be at the moment. * We believe this to be an.area su_premely endowed by manas well as nature, and willresist any attempts to erase anything that remains from our fabled past unless it can be proved that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Weare for those industries that will bring payrolls, people, and economic stability to Nevada County. And, for good measure, we are for good schools, good libraries, good government--and against sin. Most of all, though, we are for you-the reader andthe only true citizen. Our eyes and ears are open, our cameras are focused, to the end that you will find in our pages the Nevada County you know and love. CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY INVESTMENT PAYS DIVIDEND OF SMOG, CLUTTER, FILTH, CONGESTION In building a transportation system to meet the needs of automobiles, we are almost masochistically indulging in failure. We are not meeting the transportation needs

of people and their goods. We are helping to cause the physical deterioration of California communities. We have been all too ready to permit a constitutionally protected buréautracy, ‘the State Division’ of Highways, to assume that the psychological predilection of people for their cars justifies the building of a highway system, in lieu of a genuinely economical, efficient and attractive system of mass transport. One thing about cars is certain: give them an inch, and they'll take a mile, right out of the middle of your home town. For example, businessmen wanted the freeways which now ring, bisect, and gut Los Angeles, to » bring business downtown. But those freeways carry a heavy load of traffic not to the downtown merchants, but through and around them to major regional shopping centers in outlying neighborhoods, In the early 1930's 75 percent of the metropolitan area's retail sales took place in downtown Los Angeles. By 1946 this percentage had been reduced to 50 percent and it was down to 18 percent by 1960, And the overall appearance of the area seems to have grown progressively worse with the opening of each new freeway. Yet partly as a tesult of the building of the freeways, Los Angeles County alone must spend about $4 billion on secondary street deficiencies within the next 20 years, with little real hope for a solution to the problems of congestion, or of parking. The experience of Los Angeles is duplicated in some degree in almost every California city. In spending a billion dollars a year we are improving our highways and parking facilities. But in the process we are clogging our city streets, ruining our landscape and subsidizing an uneconomical and inefficent “system” of transport. Without doubt the automobile, in some form ‘or other, will be around for a good many decades. And the automobile willremainthe workhorse of California transpor~tation for some time. But this hardly means that our . cities -that we ourselves -can complacently regard the automobile as the epitome of transportation, or the Division of Highways as the very god of motion. Yet the evidence points to the fact that we have indeed prostrated ourselves, physically and spiritually, before the automobile, andthe autocratic society. See how “S961 ‘LI 19q0190°° -3088nN au’ * ‘py 28eg 7 aBeg’’ the finny monster dominates your life, occupies a large . room of your house, eats up about 13 percent of your income, demolishes the hegemony of your town, manufactures your smog, threatens your park, recklessly sires a profusion of billboards in an already uglified world, invites scattered development. Our blindness regarding transportation isvirtually complete, We rely on the automobile and the highway, we refuse to recognize the destructive effect of either, and our communities have done little to control them. At the same time, the concept of an integrated system of transportation, involving a variety of carriers, seems to be beyond the grasp of most of our leadership. So we spend our billions for cars and highways, vaguely hoping that thereby the old American dream of the open road will someday become a reality. But our investment is really in smog, filth, clutter, and congestion, which so many of us suffer in eerie silence. --Samuel E. Wood and Alfred Heller, from "The Phantom Cities of California”, Illustrations by Osborn/Woods “We rely on the automobile and the highway, we refuse to recognize the destructive effect of either, and our communities have done little to control them.” , me CS Ree er) ee ri. T Matai st , . ees Meee [ , peer ee J