Saving Paradise
John Broesamle’s life of service demonstrates how an individual can create impact through what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called an “inescapable network of mutuality."
Development tends to be incremental. After the first mass of tract housing with its roads and box stores, another arrives, destroying habitat and breaking up animal and bird migration paths.
Early on, I learned that the patronizing attitude toward the ordinary citizen, along with the accusation “You’re a NIMBY,” is a pejorative that’s part of the developer’s toolkit.
An example is Port Townsend, my birthplace. With a population of 10,000, it sits on the Salish Sea and offers spectacular views of the Olympic and Cascade Mountain ranges. For decades, citizens struggled to protect the historic and scenic downtown and Victorian uptown, mostly successfully. At the same time, surrounding areas that lead into Port Townsend were sacrificed to random commercial properties and paved-over pastures.
Port Townsend fared better than nearby Sequim. The Sequim Valley once held a charming business area of small locally owned shops fronted on one side by rolling fields stretching to the sea, and on the other, forests reaching into the Olympic Range. My parents frequently loaded their six kids, our bicycles, and a picnic into the VW bus to head for Sequim, and the eight of us safely rode through pristine fields to the sea.
Little by little, and then in huge gobs, Sequim’s rich farmlands filled with subdivisions, some so randomly arranged as to seem a child’s cruel joke. Then came gigantic box stores covering acres of previously green fields and quiet country roads. Most locally owned enterprises were forced out.
In contrast, just a ferry ride and a short drive from Sequim and Port Townsend is a village whose residents have rejected box stores. La Conner, located in Washington’s Skagit Valley, maintains its small-business character along the street facing Swinomish Slough, with well-maintained Victorian-style homes perched above on a bluff. Farmlands, some adorned with tulips in spring, stretch like orderly and gracious paintings behind. This spirit of preservation led to La Conner’s listing on state and national historic registries.
Just across the historic Rainbow Bridge from La Conner’s tiny downtown, in 2013, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Council (SITC) formed a department of environmental protection of its own. Kukutali Preserve, located on the reservation, is the first tribal park co-owned and jointly managed by a tribe and state agency, the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission. The Preserve, open to the public, includes eighty-three acres spanning three islands and over two miles of shoreline.
In my own backyard, thanks in part to Bruce Brown’s Mountain in the Clouds, and chronicled in the documentary “Damnation,” after decades of lobbying by the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and allies, Congress passed the Elwha River Ecosystem and Restoration Act. The two dams on Elwha River were simultaneously removed between 2011 and 2014. The dam removal, largest in the world at the time, liberated more than 70 miles of pristine salmon habitat. Wild salmon and countless other species continue to return, celebrated by naturalists and by the original people who thrived there for centuries and mourned when their sacred territories were destroyed.
Just a few miles away, on the banks of Hood Canal, a fragile deep water fjord, a Canadian developer plans a golf course and resort. Despite over a decade of protests from tribal groups and citizens, surrounding forests near a lake, estuary, and shorelines have already been logged.
Overhead, in part of the Olympic National Park identified as one of the quietest places in the continental United States, Boeing EA-18G Growler jets practice electronic warfare exercises. The jets fly out of the Naval Air Station on nearby Whidbey Island, where residents report illness due to noise levels as high as 130 decibels.
For another case study of how to save a paradise, I found myself in the unlikely region of Southern California, the quintessential monument to the great American automobile. Odd, perhaps, that a village called Ojai, located ninety minutes northwest of Los Angeles, exemplifies how citizens, over time, stood up to the behemoths of money, power, and greed.
Logging is the go-to industry along the Olympic Mountain Range where I live, with slope after slope denuded. Around Ojai, harvestable “crops” included gravel, phosphate, uranium, and oil. In a state characterized by ever-spreading concrete, Ojai is heralded as a beacon of small-town charm, surrounded by rolling hills, ranches, and protected wilderness that stretches for thousands of acres.
The first time I navigated the steep curves of the Dennison Grade into the three-by-ten-mile Ojai Valley from Highway 150, I thought I’d landed in a Norman Rockwell painting. The Ojai Valley holds about 7,500 residents, and the commercial part of the village, with small locally run shops, restaurants, and stores, spans just a few blocks. Formed by transverse ranges running east and west, the iconic Topa Topa mountains form Ojai’s apex.
The Chumash thrived in the valley for thousands of years, subsisting on rich natural resources and creating art and music in well-established villages. In 1837, settler Fernando Tico was given a Spanish land grant and cleared much of Valley for cattle and crops. Soon, travelers from the east discovered the Valley’s moderate climate and miraculously clear air, hot in the summer with occasional wafts of ocean breezes. Hot springs sacred to the original people became meccas and resorts for tourist-filled stagecoaches. Some stayed on, homesteading or purchasing large tracts of land.
Arriving in 1908, Edward Libbey, a glass magnate from Ohio, proposed the plan for the town’s commercial blocks, more or less as they exist today. When 360 acres of oak and sycamore-forested land near his home were scheduled for logging to feed the voracious steam engines of the time, Libbey purchased it all with the idea of preserving the trees for a residential community. Called Arbolada, or “treed place,” this neighborhood remains roughly as Libbey envisioned it, with narrow curving roads and spectacular gardens beneath the oaks.
What I first noticed about Ojai, though, were small children riding toy-like bicycles in the streets with their parents. Almost everyone, it seemed, of all ages and shapes, was out bicycling, walking, or what Californians call “hiking,” either on the roads or on myriad trails that lead directly from the village and up the surrounding hillsides. Whether exploring the trails, riding a bicycle down the former railroad grade to the Pacific, or strolling the commercial area, I was struck that most people made eye contact and said hello. Raised in the Northwest chill, where hikers or city walkers tend to avoid eye contact or greeting, I was stunned. Were these people for real?
I quickly learned that in Ojai, if I expressed any kind of negative comment, such as the one I just made there, I received a curious reaction. The person paused. Her expression was neither a smile nor a frown. And then my lapse was passed over, as if I’d never said a word. Over four years of visits, where residents invited me into their homes and lives, I learned that although debate occurs, argument is considered bad form. At a public hearing, members of the Planning Commission courteously listened to each speaker.
I suspect the gentle approach might be a trickle effect from the spiritual centers, open and free to the public, that appear on almost every hillside and all sides of town. Most famous of Ojai’s spiritual luminaries was Jiddu Krishnamurti, a handsome fellow followed by thousands, including celebrities, who flocked to Ojai to listen to his lectures beneath the oaks. Ojai’s other gorgeous and public sacred spaces include meditation halls and gardens, a university, a nunnery, Buddhist monasteries, and active community churches of every denomination. The village is also home to artists, with painters’ easels perched atop the hiking trail overlooking the town, music, film, poetry and playwright’s festivals, art walks and galleries, and a fully renovated community theater featuring talented musicians and actors.
At one such event, a lecture atop a hillside, I was privileged to meet historian and author John Broesamle. Professor Broesamle earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, taught history at California State University, Northridge, for thirty-two years, and wrote Reform and Reaction in 20th Century Politics, among many other works. In 1987, he and his wife Kathy purchased a home in Ojai. While he continued teaching until 2000, it made for a long commute.
Finally, “I could no longer stay away,” Broesamle told me. Weary of academic infighting, he initially had no intention of involving himself in local issues. However, as he and Kathy learned of environmental threats to their new-found community, Broesamle concluded that “simply by living here, we have an obligation to protect this place.” When he looked at calamities overcome by previous Ojai Spartans, as he called them, he realized that had earlier residents not faced down mining and logging, he and Kathy would never have chosen Ojai as their home.
“Kathy and I owe the world to Ojai,” Broesamle told me. “The sunny and open community made us better people; we had to try to live up to Ojai and the unique setting that drew us here before we ever even knew there was such a community.”
Broesamle soon became president of Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, which, under his watch, acquired the Ilvento Preserve, Cluff Vista Park, the Ojai Meadows Preserve, and the Ventura River Preserve. Then, in 2009, John and Kathy donated some of their savings to help found a non-profit, the Ojai Valley Defense Fund (OVDF), with the goal of raising a million dollars. The fund is held in reserve so that when super-highways, sub-divisions, box stores, mines, or other projects threaten “the well-being of all, a great majority or at the least, a substantial plurality of the people of the greater Ojai Valley,” there’s money to fund the fight.
As I learned early on in my own struggles to protect forests and shorelines, advocacy often means going to court. As John Broesamle explained and I have observed, this is because developers and governing bodies, theoretically bound by county and state codes, find ways to circumvent hearings and permitting processes and even to collude with logging companies and developers. The lure of increased tax revenues and vague promises of local jobs looms larger than the inchoate value of preserving heritage forests and unpolluted water or protecting wild creatures. As has happened throughout the world, profit, tax revenues, and promises of jobs have become the rationale for stripping and paving the wilderness that remains.
One of Ojai’s first major threats emerged in the Sixties when California’s transportation system, known as Caltrans, proposed building freeways through the heart of the Ojai Valley. Local citizens, the Ojai City Council, and the press successfully opposed this plan. Following that, a proposal for 10,000 homes to accommodate 25,000 to 35,000 residents was introduced for construction on the Lake Casitas watershed, which provides drinking water for much of the Valley. Once again, locals organized opposition groups, ultimately appealing directly to Congress. In response, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation established the Teague Memorial Watershed, prohibiting development on 3,500 acres surrounding the lake and the Santa Inez wilderness.
In the Seventies, open-pit phosphate and uranium mining were proposed in the nearby Los Padres National Forest. The uranium mining would have been within the Teague Memorial Watershed, just above Lake Casitas. Had this been successful, truck-and-trailers would have roared daily through residential areas. Almost two thousand people attended a public hearing to oppose the phosphate mining, and again petitioned Congress; in both cases, citizens prevailed.
Today, driving west along Highway 33 near Ojai, visitors pass between a wildlife habitat, open to the public, and a large field tufted with lemony mustard. These were proposed sites for a “big box” shopping center, housing, and condominiums. After a battle of almost a decade, the developer threatened to sue.
“Things got gory,” Broesamle told me. Eventually, through the OVLC, citizens raised more than a million dollars to purchase the 58 acres. OVLC then restored the wetland, removed noxious and invasive plants, and planted natives, an effort that continues. Within one year, hundreds of migrating birds discovered the tiny oasis. Citizens of all ages flock there too, to walk or sit surrounded by wild creatures. The project became a restoration model for Southern California.
In the Nineties, development interest turned to high-end housing. A dozen large homes were planned for eighty-acre parcels. The project would have closed public access to 1,600 acres of open space along the Los Padres National Forest. Once again, following prolonged legal challenges and negotiations, OVLC purchased the piece using state grants and citizen contributions of almost four million dollars. The hundreds who walk, bike, and ride horses in today’s Ventura River Preserve are beneficiaries of these now-invisible struggles.
Subsequent proposals successfully stopped by citizens included a supra-regional landfill and gravel extraction project, each requiring hundreds of truck-and-trailer trips daily; wildcat oil drilling on private land in what is called Upper Ojai, a mostly undeveloped area dotted with large ranches, orchards, and farms; expansion of a refinery at the Valley’s mouth; an airport; sub-division of a vast and gorgeous ranch into one to two-acre lots, and construction of a motorcycle test track.
What does it take to preserve the quality of life in a community and its surrounding wilderness? First, someone within that community must decide it’s worth saving. According to Broesamle, Ojai benefits from its cultural tradition of civic service and a spiritual and artistic quest. “It’s a place that gets into your marrow,” Broesamle said. As Broesamle himself recognized, residents and tourists alike must understand that the pristine quality results from almost a century of local effort. Newcomers “need to absorb civic commitment into their values,” Broesamle stated.
As with anything important, a key element is persistence. “Wear the bastards down,” Broesamle said with a smile. After my first charmed experience advocating for Meadowdale Park, where I was the only citizen to present a wilderness-based proposal, every subsequent action felt hopeless. I needed to work and take care of my family; the developers had all the money, time, and power. And standing up to bullies, I learned, does not earn applause. Once, I emerged from a hearing at the local elementary school to find my tires flattened.
“Somebody doesn’t like you,” a grinning bystander observed. Another time I drove home late at night to find uprooted trees and shrubs blocking my way. My mother received a death threat on her phone. Her crime? A neighbor was shooting pregnant harbor seals, a protected species, when they hauled out on his raft, and my mother called Fish and Wildlife.
“We’ll just shoot them seals,” the message said. “And then we’ll shoot you.” My mother, a local schoolteacher, laughed. She’d heard worse.
In the Ojai Valley, each successful outcome arrived in the eleventh hour. A problem when environmental threats first appear is that “people often don’t get it,” Broesamle said. “They don’t really believe these proposals will result in anything bad.” People need jobs, and recessions create a deadening effect. It’s hard to attend yet another public hearing when one can barely get out of bed to rush the kids to school and get to work oneself. Once at the hearing, it’s intimidating to walk to the front of a room and read a statement. For citizens unaccustomed to public speaking and the terminology of legislation and law, it takes little to pin people timidly to their seats.
“He says it’s a green development,” one local said of the developer for the proposed golf resort near where I live. He hunched down in his seat, shaking his head when I urged him to read his statement of concern. “That’s good enough for me.”
“When projects are proposed,” Broesamle said, “it’s important to look at scale.” The first rule should be “do no harm.” Is what’s being proposed self-sustaining, or will it drain resources from the community? Although most developers claim their project will provide revenue and jobs, it’s also essential to examine proposals in terms of increased fire danger, emergency medical calls, crime, noise, light, water and air pollution, wear and tear on local roads, and potential chemical run-off into local waterways. For the local proposed golf resort and in the Ojai Valley, potable water is a scarce resource. Here, the proposed resort development could cause drawdown or saltwater intrusion into previously existing wells; in the fine print of the developer’s proposal, the burden of proof is on well owners.
Environmental impact statements presented by developers and their “experts” can require hundreds of hours to pick through and analyze. As citizens, Broesamle told me, we don’t have to know every detail or scientific fact. We can counter a proposal based on spiritual, quality of life, or environmental issues important to us. Not only do we have the right, but we need to speak out or that quality of life may vanish.
Americans often confuse bigness with greatness, historian Broesamle observed. To claim, as most developers do, that “it’s good for the community to build” can result in a tipping point after which a community begins to fail. Trees are cut. Earth is excavated. Water resources are tapped or despoiled. Classic urban sprawl is happening everywhere, resulting in the paving over of America and the depredation of natural resources.
“Wear the bastards down,” Professor Broseamle said with his gentle smile. “Sue them if you have to. But always be polite and respectful, even when the disagreement is fevered.” One tree, one acre, one pond at a time, citizens can bring about change that serves future generations and the planet itself. As Carmen Nava observed for the American Historical Association, John Broesamle’s life of service demonstrates how an individual can create impact through what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called an “inescapable network of mutuality.”
John Broesamle, professor emeritus of history and noted champion of the wilderness, died in Ojai on June 17, 2023 at the age of 82
A version of this article along with my earlier post,“Those Trees are Teachers,” was originally published by Still Points Arts Quarterly and nominated for Best American Essays and a Pushcart Prize
To support restoration, preservation, and youth mentoring in Jefferson County, Washington, check out Northwest Watershed Institute and Jefferson County Land Trust
Wonderfully crafted essay Kirie! 🥰 I’ve known and learned from people like John Brosamle. So grateful to hear of his role as a collaborator and leader in Ojai. It helps those of us who feel a bit outnumbered and out resourced at times to hear the stories of success. Thank you for your support of the Northwest Watershed Institute!
Thanks for sharing such an important essay on a beautiful paradise. ✌️