A Selection from The Golden Fortress

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 1 of my latest book, The Golden Fortress: California’s Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees, published Aug. 9, 2022, by Chicago Review Press. If you’d like to read the rest of the chapter, and the book, I have a limited number of signed editions available for purchase here, or you can order the book from Bookshop or your favorite retailer. The audio book is also available from Libro.fm and other sellers, and ebooks are available in EPUB, PDF, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Apple Books and Google Play.

A CLOUDLESS SKY BLANKETED ALTURAS as a string of sedans turned off Highway 299.

Temperatures that afternoon had briefly crept above freezing but dipped again as dusk arrived. From atop a three-story brick building at the other end of Main Street, the word HOTEL blazed against the cloudless sky. On an evening as clear as that one in early February 1936, the beacon of the signage must have been a welcome sight to the cars’ occupants as they drove those last three blocks from the highway to the Niles Hotel, hundreds of miles, two days, and a world away from home. That those last three blocks also composed the entirety of downtown Alturas said everything about how far they’d traveled.

After the men parked their cars, they might have reflexively shivered beneath their polished leather jackboots and thought of the all-year warmth and sun they’d left behind. If any of the men passed beneath the street lamp at the corner of Modoc and Main Streets, its glow might have glinted across the gold-toned badges they carried, illuminating an eagle’s wings spread above the words POLICE OFFICER and LOS ANGELES typed in blue lettering beneath, and the embossed seal that read, CITY OF LOS ANGELES. FOUNDED 1781.

Once inside the Niles Hotel, thirteen Los Angeles police officers waited as their commanding sergeant, R. L. Bergman, checked them into the hotel. The next morning they would officially begin their new assignment here in the seat of Modoc County, six hundred miles away from the City of Angels. Somehow, despite traveling so far, the officers still hadn’t left the Golden State.

A cultural distance matched the physical distance. Alturas was Modoc County’s largest town and still remote from the nearest settlements of any size. The hotel was at the southern end of downtown, which ended a few hundred feet away at a small bridge over the gurgling Pit River. It was surrounded by the kind of businesses typical of a certain mythologized small town in the early twentieth-century American West: a coffee shop next door, a butcher down the block, a liquor store up the street, and an inn across Main Street with signage advertising BUFFALO BEER on tap. The county courthouse was just a couple blocks northeast of the hotel. A few businesses fronted East and West Carlos Street. The rest of the nearby streets were residential. The surrounding sparse, frigid, mostly undeveloped expanse where the men would work for the foresee- able future dramatically contrasted with the bustling, sun-bathed metropolis they’d left two days prior, but their task remained the same as it had been at home: protect and serve the City of Los Angeles.

Soon after the officers arrived at the Niles Hotel, a primly dressed woman walked in and introduced herself to Sergeant Bergman. She was Gertrude Payne French, the publisher of the Alturas Plaindealer. Could she just interview the sergeant for a little bit about why the police had come all the way to Modoc County from Los Angeles?

She could. Bergman knew how highly his boss, Los Angeles police chief James Edgar Davis, valued good publicity. And Homer Cross, Davis’s deputy in charge of crime prevention and this operation’s key architect, had softened the ground throughout the state in the weeks leading up to the deployed officers’ arrival.

French already knew why they were there, of course. Cross had talked to her when he came to Modoc County that January. Even if he hadn’t, French may have known, as she prided herself on how plugged in she was to events transpiring all across California. After all, she was one of the Native Daughters of the Golden West, a member of the Alturas Chamber of Commerce board of directors, and, like her husband, R. A. “Bard” French, a former operative in the state Republican Party. Gertrude and Bard were very encouraged, French told Bergman, that someone—Chief Davis—was finally doing something about the “penniless itinerants and criminals” plaguing the Golden State. Concerns about how out-of-town police might disrupt Modoc County were already spreading. The Plaindealer would diligently downplay these concerns on its pages, but, French told Bergman and would repeat in print the next day, the paper was “reserving our final judgment to see what happens.”

Whatever judgment ensued, numerous scenes like the one taking place at the Niles Hotel likely occurred throughout the remotest corners of California that evening. Davis had sent Bergman, the two seven-officer squads working under him, and 120 other Los Angeles police officers—each handpicked by the chief from a larger pool of volunteers—to seize control of the state’s borders. Each squad was stationed at one of sixteen entry points around the perimeter of California. Some would patrol highways and set up checkpoints to stop incoming cars, while others boarded trains to look for fare evaders and stowaways. All those entering California who appeared unable to support themselves and likely to become public charges or who the officers believed likely to be criminals would be stopped. No one was to get through without permission from the Los Angeles Police Department, even if Los Angeles itself was hundreds of miles away.

Los Angeles police chief James Edgar Davis and Los Angeles County superior court judge Minor Moore present Los Angeles mayor Frank Shaw with a Texas-shaped birthday cake on the eve of Davis’s rollout of his border blockade. Courtesy of Los Angeles Times Photograph Collection, Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

Perhaps Chief Davis, originally from Texas, thought of the deployment’s launch as a birthday gift for his boss, Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw. That Saturday morning, Davis sat down with Shaw, not to celebrate his birthday but to discuss the blockade, just as someone wheeled a sixteen-pound birthday cake into the mayor’s office. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Minor Moore—also a transplant from the Lone Star State, and president of the Texas Society of Southern California—was the enormous dessert’s likely mastermind. Moore, who called Shaw to wish him a happy birthday just as the cake arrived, had conspired with Shaw’s Texas-born wife, Cora; his mayoral counterpart in Dallas, George Sergeant; and officials from the Texas Centennial Exposition, who actually paid for the giant confection.

As mayor and police chief, respectively, Shaw and Davis were among Los Angeles’s most prominent public figures. Before becoming mayor, Shaw, a grocery-chain executive and one of California’s wealthiest politicians, was a Los Angeles County supervisor who led the county board’s efforts to blame Los Angeles’s fiscal woes on poor, unemployed migrants. Davis, a former chief of police who’d been re-elevated to the position when Shaw was elected mayor, made arresting homeless and other visibly poor Angelenos a key plank of his policing strategy. Both men could trace their success in part to the city’s obsession with drawing tourists (and their money) while simultaneously shunning poor migrants (and their need). Like other California cities, Depression-era Los Angeles treated transients as little more than parasitic threats. Indigent relief was burden enough for these cities’ own residents, the argument went. Why should they pay for other cities’ discards?

Reliant as their public rhetoric might have been on antimigrant sentiment, neither Davis nor Shaw were truly of Los Angeles. Between fleeing his native Texas and arriving nearly broke in Los Angeles, Davis spent many of his early years as a drifter, while Shaw was born in Canada and grew up bouncing around the Midwest. Neither likely discussed those backgrounds when they met at city hall three days before Davis’s officers arrived in Alturas.

The day after their meeting, Davis put an exclamation point on declarations that outsiders—or at least, the wrong kind of outsiders—just weren’t welcome in the City of Angeles. Davis deployed his border patrol, confident in a full-throated endorsement from Shaw. The chief also knew he could count on support from the Los Angeles powerbrokers who helped elect the mayor three years earlier and who for years had decried what they believed were “hordes” of transient “ne’er do-wells” invading the city. Now well into his second stint as Los Angeles’s police chief, Davis had Shaw to thank for his job.

Whether Davis conceived the operation as a favor to Shaw or not, the fervor with which he pursued it was hardly surprising. He cared little about misgivings lawmakers expressed about earlier proposed anti-indigent and anti- migrant measures. He also had no qualms that his officers might trample a few constitutional protections in their attack on criminality and the vagrants who he believed embodied it.

And it would make sense if Davis believed he owed something to the mayor. At the outset of 1930 Shaw’s predecessor, John C. Porter, had demoted Davis from chief to deputy chief after a series of high-profile scandals involving his department. After Shaw replaced Porter in 1933, one of his first official acts had been to put Davis back in power. In return, Davis carefully crafted his police department to serve as the primary municipal tool to guard the free-market-cherishing, business-friendly forces cherished by Shaw and responsible for his election.

Amid the economic turmoil and labor unrest of the Great Depression, Davis—while also sparking the Los Angeles Police Department’s inchoate development into a paramilitary force that would serve as the national standard for militarized policing—reveled in using the department’s power to harass and intimidate union organizers, civil libertarians, and political progressives. Now, the chief turned his attention toward the wretched souls washing across California’s borders from barren Dust Bowl farms and Depression-shuttered factories. To hear it from the agenda-setting Los Angeles Times, the city’s chamber of commerce, and Davis himself, these domestic migrants, if not already criminals, were likely to become criminals given enough time loitering on the streets of Los Angeles.

Davis’s plan would neutralize that threat with a phalanx of officers at California’s borders ready to block incoming laborers while the rest of his officers scoured Los Angeles’s streets for indigent transients and “vagrants.” After months of preparation, the plan was finally ready. Beginning that Sunday, February 3—a day after Shaw’s birthday—and continuing into the following afternoon, squad after squad of officers piled into personal cars, drove past the city limits, and continued to the farthest reaches of California, where they would assume their duties as the Golden State’s first line of defense from the uncivilized masses beyond.

National Parks for the Whole Nation

For High Country News's A Just West blog this week I explored the interplay between race, economic status and access to parks and outdoor recreation. The post originally appeared here.

I'll admit it. There are some environmental topics I just don't know much about.

For example, I first heard of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir when friends living near Yosemite invited me to visit during my move from Los Angeles to Portland (that January trip was itself my first visit to Yosemite). I saw a sign and took note of the name mainly because I thought it sounded funny. Of course, it's more than amusing alliteration. News about the state of the Hetch Hetchy and a recent vote on the reservoir's future had me wondering: how many people served by the reservoir have actually been to Yosemite, or any other National Park?

Though I grew up within sight of Channel Islands National Park, I've only set foot on the islands twice. I did, however, often take vacations with my family to the Sierras and attended a summer camp there. During a summer in my college years I spent a summer living just outside Yellowstone and I've since traveled to a number of other national parks.

There's something else that by my very nature I won't be able to fully understand: what it's like to be non-white in America. When it comes to our national parks, I often felt as an adult like I was “catching up” with friends when I visited, partaking in an experience that I thought was normal, but turns out isn't so common for people who don't look like me.

Not only are there issues of racial disparity at national parks, but there are also numerous barriers to park access for low income individuals of any race or ethnicity, and that lack of access extends to state and municipal parks as well. California, for example, lacks adequate access to state parks. “There are few state parks in the areas that need them most,” wrote The City Project in an Aug. 11 post to its City Project Blog.

The Los Angeles area, for example, has 49 percent of the state's population but only 5.5 acres of state parks per thousand residents, compared to the Bay Area's 34.7 acres per thousand residents. Working with a coalition of civic groups, the City Project is urging the California Department of Parks and Recreation to “adopt an equity plan to ensure that the benefits and burdens of state parks and recreation are distributed fairly for all, including underserved communities in park poor and income poor areas of California.”

Two years ago, the University of Southern California's Center for Sustainable Cities (Full disclosure: I took a course at the center during my graduate studies) took one well-publicized step to addressing L.A.'s park poverty).

“Parks are infused with all sorts of beliefs about the relationship between the environment and society and between different social groups,” wrote Jason Byrne, a USC student who studied at the center, in a 2007 paper. “Because park spaces are not ideologically neutral, parks can tell us much about the values that underpin certain societies.”

Transitioning from discussions of economic disparity and park access, evidence continues to mount about racial disparities among park visitors and staff, as John Grossman wrote this summer for National Parks magazine. There's even a growing body of scholarly research [PDF] on the topic. Others have seen this disparity first hand. After Audrey and Frank Peterman's kids finished college, the couple took across-country trip through 40 states and numerous National Parks and Forests and discovered “they saw less than a handful of Americans of Hispanic, Asian, African or Native American heritage enjoying the Great American outdoors, or working in them.” Since then, they've become advocates for the park system and for access to them.

As eagerly as we might want to repair environmental damages of the past and prevent it in the future, there's clearly a great need to connect more of our population to its surroundings. Doing so means providing access for a larger portion of our population to the unfathomable wonder that still exists in our backyards. Anyone who wants to make a convincing case about the need to prevent environmental degradation will be well-served by working to ensure more people have access to the world we want to protect.

Later this summer I'm planning to visit Washington's Mount Rainier National Park. I'm curious who I'll meet when I'm there, and what I'll learn.

The eyesore, history and the untold story

The Ventura County Star reported Oct. 30 that Ventura County Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser halted the demoliton of the Wagon Wheel hotel. The stay came after what seemed like the end of a long fight between developer Vince Daly and the San Buenaventura Conservancy.

Many comments posted to the Star's Web site featured the theme of the Wagon Wheel as an eyesore, a blemish to the entrance of Oxnard, Ventura County's largest city. The building and its surroundings, they argue, should have been torn down long ago. Some commenters argue the conservancy should repay Daly for the costs of the delay, costs he claims mount by the thousands each day the construction is delayed. For his own part, Daly argues in the Star article that blocking the demolition permit further delays construction of the affordable housing element of his development. On the other hand, neither Star reporter Scott Hadly, his sources on either side of the story, nor any of the commenters pouncing on the article address one crucial question: why is Daly building this project now? Why is it so urgent?

Drive across the 101 from the Wagon Wheel, located here and one finds the massive development known as RiverPark. On the north side of the freeway, just outside of that development, stands a billboard declaring homes starting from "the 200s." That simple advertisement, that homes in RiverPark are selling for only 200 grand, tells the entire story. Homes aren't selling in Ventura County. Even with reports Oct. 29 of an unofficial end ot the "worst recession since World War II," our economy is sputtering. Should Daly, or anyone, be building new homes right now?

Let's argue for a moment that he should, that he has a right to, or that, simply, as the owner of the property upon which the Wagon Wheel Motel stands he should be allowed to finish the project he's started. Does that mean A) It's right if he does so or B) It's wise if he does? Daly seems to be gambling that by the time the project is completed we will be out of this gut-wrenching time, that consumers are going to return to the table unaffected by the misery of the past two years, give or take a quarter, that every American is going to want a condo or a townhouse across a freeway offramp from a cookie cutter mini-mall and down the block from a thousand other condos and townhouses just like their very own (though the possibility of a "transit center" at The Village raises some intriguing possibilities).

Are we so sure of that? Are we so sure that our behaviors are not going to change after this recession, that we're not going to think strategically, that we're not going to act differently, that we're not going to operate differently? Even if we get ourselves into some other economic mess — which is quite likely — some lessons, even if they're not the right ones, have surely been learned during this period.

Besides the possibility Daly is hoping for a boom by the time The Village is done, another reason one might want to see it started immediately directly relates to the current economy. Perhaps, one might argue, every day we hesitate to build is a day we cost ourselves valuable construction jobs, jobs that could earn money to feed families, jobs that could pay residents money they can use to spend on clothes and food and cars and gadgets and all the other everythings sold in the county's stores. Aren't we, by blocking those jobs, which provide that income, which allows that spending also preventing the economic growth that comes from that spending, preventing the jobs created by that growth, and preventing the income those jobs allow?

Perhaps.

What are we really protecting? We have a great deal of unsold housing stock. Oxnard has buildings that already exist. Ventura County has miles upon miles of substandard homes and poorly utilized space. What if we spent the same time, the same money, the same energy and investment and subsidies we would put into new projects on instead reconstructing the cities and communities and neighborhoods that already exist? What if we brought our county, and our country, back to life? We might accomplish multiple goals. We would still put our contractors and construction crews and architects and plumbers and electricians and welders back to work, but we would do so without turning our backs on our neighbors and on our past. We could engage our community. What if we integrated our history into our past, instead of throwing it out? What if, instead, we learned to reuse the materials that already exist across Ventura County and beyond, to really recycle the world in which we live, rather than throw it out like the 4.5 pounds of trash we still throw away each and every day?

The Untold Story

Meanwhile where is the Ventura County Reporter? The county's alternative newsweekly — which I edited from 2007-2008 — has the luxury as a weekly publication to dig deeply behind this story. Why hasn't it looked at the subject in more depth since Matt Singer's 2006 examination of the project, in which Singer took the time to speak with Daly? The Reporter barely touched on the topic since then. (including during my time at the helm, though I did mention it in this Nov., 2007 piece about a proposed traffic control initiative in Oxnard). In March, Staff Writer Paul Sisolak wrote a piece about the Conservancy's lawsuit against the city for allegedly violating state environmental rules by approving the project, but that's the only significant reference. Sisolak's piece introduced the story, but it paired extensive discussion of the conservancy's position with only a brief quote from a city councilman supporting Oxnard's official position.

The quote is, in fact, a doozy. Oxnard Mayor Pro Tem Andres Herrera told Sisolak "But I vividly recall … that the original plans the owner had never included preservation. I just don’t see the historical significance to a dilapidated hotel.”

What original planner of any building includes historic preservation its plans? Who sits down and says "this will be a historic space?" (actually I imagine there are many ego-driven builders who proclaim the significance of a building, but I believe you understand my point)? Again, isn't there an argument to be made that perhaps the reason the complex is dilapidated, perhaps the reason it looks so uninviting is because it has hung in limbo for so long?

More importantly, why did the Reporter stop there with that story? Granted, the Oct. 30 stay occurred after the most recent Reporter went to press, and Reiser's decision two days earlier not to halt construction may have missed the print deadline as well; however, where was the paper for the runup to the decision or any of the past seven months since it last covered this subject? Why hasn't it investigated the nuances of land use in Oxnard, the ways in which the city is cast again and again as the toilet of Ventura County, as the dump that must be saved from its past by some glorious new future, the city that, in order to be saved, must be destroyed? Perhaps it might even discover, or present a feature that allows its readers to discover, that Daly's proposal is a needed project. Yet the story remains untold.

As it turns out, the Reporter's most recent cover story focuses on "the top 10 stories not brought to you by the mainstream media in 2008 and 2009," an annual list of under-reported news stories compiled by Project Censored. While it's important to draw readers' attention to buried subjects, countless other online outlets make available the content the Reporter repackages here. In doing so, it misses opportunities to inform its readers and strengthen civic engagement by digging into subjects it has the ability to sink its teeth into. Instead of opening eyes, it's missing the opportunity to start a real discussion within the community about how Ventura County will move on from the recession and whether Oxnard can ever grow in a different fashion. Those are the sort of stories that can't be duplicated, and thus the sort of stories that make a publication indispensable. Like any business in any industry, any news outlet that wants to survive must make itself indispensable.

Los Angeles in Your Eyes

What is Los Angeles?

How do you answer that question? Unlike perhaps any city in the United States, Los Angeles is definitionless. Some might even apply Gertrude Stein's famous statement about Oakland, that “there is no there, there,” to Los Angeles.

What I find so interesting though, is that there are, in fact, so, so many here's, here. My question for readers: How do you share these here's with others? How do you define Los Angeles for visitors, for out of town family, for distant friends?

I've been wondering this for months. If a friend were to visit from out of town, what kind of tour would I give her or him, especially if we only had a short time to explore?

Northwestern Inspiration

Please excuse a touch of digressive background before my call for L.A. tour ideas. Though I've been thinking about this post for a long time,  a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest finally inspired its composition. Though astute readers of Lascher at Large know my feelings about Portland — feelings only reinforced this last visit — they might not know this was my first trip to Seattle. As a vacation it was wonderful. My traveling companion and I rode the train to the Emerald City and explored with little rhyme or reason and scant attention paid to time's constraints.

Instead, we experienced the city on our own terms, at our own pace. We had a late breakfast in Queen Anne. We lingered in the splendid Olympic Sculpture Park and loved it so much we happily returned the next day at the end of a stroll through the pouring rain. We sampled salted caramels beloved by Barack Obama and eschewed overpriced omelettes in favor of straightforward but unbelievable fish and chips and chowder from Jack's during our breakfast visit to the Pike's Place Public Market. Some friends scooped us up and enlisted us in a trivia challenge over beer in Wedgwood (We can proudly boast we helped our friends to victory and a free pitcher for their next visit). We strolled down Pike Street from Capitol Hill to Downtown, dodging gamers attending Pax as we chowed on streetside crepes (food played a major role in this vacation, as it should in any) before stopping for fantastic martinis at an eclectic Downtown bar and grill.

My point here, though, isn't to recount every minute of our weekend. Instead, it's to note how subconsciously we took Seattle in. Though we know we didn't see nearly the entire place, I think we can both agree the sheer bliss of wandering semi-aimlessly delivered a sense of the town's rhythm.

Could a visitor have a similar experience in Los Angeles? Certainly, its sheer size might inhibit a weekend visitor from ever knowing this place. Then again, what if a visitor to Los Angeles accepted that they weren't going to see it all, that they never could, that even those of us who live here will never fully understand this place? What if they just let go and enjoyed seeing what they could see?

Your L.A. Tour

I've been wondering this for months, as I've also been wondering what it would be like to share this place with friends and loved ones from out of town. How would I do it? What would I show them? In what order would I show it to them? How could I even begin, knowing what I must be leaving out?

How would you give a tour of Los Angeles with only a short time to do so? What would you show? Why? What do you think is quintessential L.A.? What can be ignored? Do you have a universal trip you'd share with every visitor or are there certain ones you'd reserve for certain people? Would there be a specific flow to your tour?

Would you use the strict geographical boundaries of the city, or would yours be more a tour of Southern California with Los Angeles as its center of gravity? If you've had visitors, tell some stories of the tours you've taken them on. List a few places that have to be visited. Give a sense of the route you'd take, of how one might move between landmarks and why you'd go that direction, why you'd take that path.

If you're not from Los Angeles, what would you want to see here if you only had a few days to do so? What is this place to you? Why would you want to visit? What type of tour would you want?

Spread the word about this post. I'm not just looking to crib some ideas for when visitors come to town, but I think the discussion that could occur here would offer a look into the myriad images society has of LA. Please share this post with your friends and get them involved. I imagine the conversation that might ensue will be indicative of the variety of neighborhoods and populations and landscapes and experiences that only can be had here.

Why I care

I represent the fifth generation of my family to live in this city, though, unlike previous generations, I wasn't raised here, but 60 miles and a world away in Ventura County. Though I'm not yet convinced it's my permanent home, I'm a great defender of this city. I react strongly when those who haven't been here rail against its supposed faults, or when those who have extrapolate one negative aspect to explain the entire town.

Where New York City is often depicted as the center of the world, L.A., even with the California Dreaming, even with the starlets hoping to make it big, seems consistently portrayed as a broken, soulless, placeless place. Yet, beneath its surface millions of places coalesce to become Los Angeles, millions of paths lead through the city, layering one on top of another. Though it can exhaust even the most focused mind to make sense of the knotted, scattered landscape, the patient will uncover gems both buried in the most distant corners of Los Angeles and shimmering in the bright glare of starlight.

Such facts might be true of any city — really, of any human experience — but at this moment I'm asking you to dissect L.A. and offer up your discoveries. Doing so is not a new endeavor. Nevertheless, how would you share Los Angeles?

Some of my own ideas

To get things started, here are a few ideas of the Los Angeles I might share, though these are some of the more obvious suggestions and there are so many gems I know I'm leaving out (specifically in the Valley, South L.A., the South Bay, and East L.A. — so give me your ideas from these neighborhoods):

• A Los Angeles Conservancy walking tour of Downtown architecture followed by lunch at Grand Central Market

• A bike ride from Santa Monica to Venice Beach

• An afternoon lazily strolling around Vermont and Hillhurst Avenues before catching the sunset, and maybe a planetarium show at the Griffith Observatory

• A ride on the Gold Line to Pasadena (and to East L.A., whenever the extension opens)

• Watching the city transition along its spine on the Wilshire Rapid 720 Bus

• Stopping over at the LA River Visitor's Center

• Biking to Heliotrope and Melrose for dinner at the Pure Luck Restaurant followed by ice cream at Scoops

• A walk around the Silverlake Reservoir before a meal on Hyperion, Silver Lake Blvd. or Rowena and a show at Spaceland

• Riding the Red Line to Hollywood on a Sunday for the Farmer's Market and some touristy wandering

• Oaxacan lunch — including fried crickets and a michelada — at La Guelaguetza

• A lazy Saturday afternoon on Larchmont

• Catching a film revival at the New Beverly Cinema before a late night nosh (especially dessert!) at Canter's

• $2 PBR at the Shortstop before a Dodgers game (p.s. I'm no hipster -- despite the PBR and Echo Park, Silverlake and Los Feliz references)

• Bar-hopping Downtown at the Edison, Cole's, the Hotel Figueroa and the Library bar, to name but a few stops

• Wandering through LACMA before a dinner in Little Ethiopia

Those are but a few of my ideas. What are yours?

P.S., who wants to buy me tickets to this?