Gaye LeBaron: Postwar building boom reshaped Santa Rosa in a flash

I would venture a guess that the majority of Sonoma County residents who consider themselves “old timers” came here in the 1970s. This is a fairly educated guess since it is well-documented that the 1970s brought the greatest population growth in this county in its history. (From 204,885 in 1970 to 299,681 in ’80, an increase of 94,796 newcomers).

They produced great change in so many areas - demographics, politics and culture.

That wasn’t, however, the first big change. That came in the era known as the postwar years, the late ’40s and the ’50s, the dawn of a new age in the entire Bay Area.

It was the kind of change that made people who came then and since ask their older neighbors, “What was it like here before the war?”

This change - maybe upheaval is an operative word - is the subject of an exhibit that opened Saturday at the History Museum of Sonoma County, or the old Post Office to those who go back that far.

Titled “Building the American Dream: Sonoma County After the War,” it takes the visitor through those years, with photos and text and memorabilia and film and videoed histories to make that pivotal time come back to life, if only for an hour or so.

MEANWHILE, LET’S LOOK back 70 years to the first bold move that put Santa Rosa in the national spotlight for the first time since Luther Burbank died.

World War II had ended Santa Rosa’s insularity. Some 7,000 soldiers and sailors from other states - other cultures - passed through the town of 12,000. Battle-seasoned young men, who might have stayed on the chicken ranch or the dairy, used the GI Bill to become engineers, doctors, lawyers and teachers. Subdivisions sprung up on the edges of the towns, with “no money down, move-right in” GI loans to accommodate new residents who had ventured out from the burgeoning Bay Area.

It was quickly apparent that despite Santa Rosa’s stature as agricultural shipping point and retail center, much was lacking in its infrastructure. Now that the war was over, there was work to be done.

In 1946, a group of energetic businessmen took the City Council away from the “old guard.” With their leadership there were civic miracles - enacting building codes and zoning laws, opening dead-end streets in the business district, installing the first traffic lights, fixing the decaying water and sewer systems, even planning a fund drive that would build Memorial Hospital.

The city improvements were accomplished with a 1 percent sales tax approved by the voters after a remarkable campaign run by a committee of 100 volunteers. They haunted KSRO’s studios, wrote to the newspapers, spoke at every service club and ladies’ group and called meetings (even one in Italian, which was the language of Santa Rosa’s largest immigrant population of the time).

Supporters of the tax measure rang every doorbell, literally, and stood on the doorsteps of every house in town. This blitz of progress, tagged “The City Designed for Living,” not only accomplished its aims, but it attracted nationwide attention.

In June of 1947, the State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission published a 28-page booklet about Santa Rosa’s successes, titled “The People Design the City.”

Mayor Obert Pedersen sent copies to every civic leader, saying that it “has made Santa Rosa one of the most publicized cities in the nation.”

There was praise from editorial pages of metropolitan and national newspapers, including the New York Times (“an energetic attack on basic problems…”), The Christian Science Monitor (“Santa Rosa is a town that saw its own weaknesses and did something…”), and the San Francisco Examiner (“Democracy …working among neighbors.”)

The whole county basked in the glory.

AND THEN CAME the 1950s. If the civic leaders thought they were ready, they hadn’t counted on the energy and enthusiasm of all the ex-GI’s coming home from the war with great expectations.

The story of the early ’50s - of boom and build and politics and power - was a microcosm of what was happening all over the Bay Area, indeed, all over the nation.

Santa Rosa’s story can be told in the stories of two men, whose parallel lives, made indelible marks on Sonoma County. To say that it was all about Hugh Codding and Henry Trione is oversimplification, I suppose. But not much.

They were in the midst of everything that was happening in the ’50s and for the rest of the 20th century.

They came from very different backgrounds. Codding, born in 1917 to pioneer families, graduated from Santa Rosa High School, apprenticed as a plumber to his stepfather, took construction classes and was building houses on spec near the fairgrounds before he was old enough to buy beer. Trione, three years younger, was born and raised in the Humboldt County town of Fortuna to immigrant parents, graduated with honors in economics from UC Berkeley. When war came, Henry entered the Navy with a commission. Hugh joined the Seabees.