Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley

Matt Jalbert

Sputnik Goes Up, the Antelope Valley Comes Down

WHEN THE SOVIET UNION LAUNCHED THE SPUTNIK SATELLITE into Earth orbit in 1957, the entire dynamic of the Cold War changed. The military shifted gears in a major way, turning away from the development of jet airplanes to focus on space vehicles. This was bad news for the Antelope Valley: within weeks of Sputnik, the government cancelled a large contract with Lockheed. Lockheed, in turn, cut Plant 42’s workforce drastically, from 6,000 to 1,000 workers. [note #22] Real estate developers who built hundreds of new homes to accommodate the booming population in the 1950s found themselves with those same homes vacant, families unable to make the payments and fleeing the Valley’s economic collapse. Repercussions shot through the local economy and many residents feared economic depression.

By the time the Antelope Valley’s economy busted in 1957, however, the area’s boosters were adept at working the Washington goose. Delegates immediately began making trips to the nation’s capital seeking large Federal projects to jump start the aerospace industry and diversify the area’s too-focused economy. Their efforts paid off; the Antelope Valley, “WHERE THERE’S SPACE FOR SPACE-AGE PRODUCTS,” [note #23] as one booster delegation trumpeted in 1959, also had space for other big Federal projects. The largest feat of water engineering in the world, California’s Feather River Project, [note #24] was in planning stages at the time; Antelope Valley lobbying succeeded in having the project’s entire east branch routed along the Valley’s southern edge (and so along the San Andreas rift zone). When the success of this lobbying effort was formally announced at the Antelope Valley Country Club, “all luncheon guests [were] served two glasses of water, symbolizing the future water abundance of the Valley.” [note #25]

The river of imported water was to “guarantee” that Valley water needs would forever be assured; meanwhile, a river of concrete was to connect the Antelope Valley to other areas of Southern California in a crucial new way. The Antelope Valley Freeway (fig. 8), completed in the late 1960s, transected the Valley near the route of the Southern Pacific tracks, wended through Soledad Pass and linked up with Interstate 5 as it descended into the Los Angeles Basin. For the first time since the railroad was built in 1876, a completely “modern” link was established to down below—the by-that-time truly sprawling Los Angeles metropolis.
The Antelope Valley recovered well in the go-go years of the 1960s. The aircraft industry made a strong comeback with the rise of commercial aviation and a resurgence in military aircraft development. The State Water Project neared completion, with its first (and perhaps only) phase completed in 1971. Southern Pacific Railroad built its first major piece of track in decades when it constructed the Palmdale–Colton Cut-off through the southern edge of the Valley. And, as if to confirm the vibrant optimism and the true prosperity of the time, Palmdale even went ahead and incorporated itself as a city in 1962, claiming some six square miles of County land as its own. [note #26]

Palmdale, though overshadowed in size and history by Lancaster, probably took the step of incorporation first [note #27] because it was the hopeful home of that truest symbol of modernity, the intercontinental airport (fig. 9). Using the facilities of Air Force Plant 42 as well as a major annexation of land to the east of Plant 42, Palmdale Intercontinental Airport was to serve 100 million travelers annually and be linked to Los Angeles via a high-speed rail connection. Local boosters foresaw the Antelope Valley as a major regional transportation hub.

An ebullient local publication proclaimed

What is happening in the ANTELOPE VALLEY today is neither a phenomenon nor a miracle. It is the inevitable logical growth following the now familiar pattern of San Fernando Valley and other surrounding areas. ANTELOPE VALLEY offers the greatest industrial and residential potential anywhere in the world, with over 17,000 acres presently zoned for industry! [note #28]

The publication elsewhere goes on,

AREN’T ALL THESE THINGS THE START OF SOMETHING BIG?… THE LONG-AWAITED FEDERAL APPROVAL OF THE PALMDALE INTERCONTINENTAL AIRPORT HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED AND WE HAVE STEPPED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD INTO A WHOLE NEW ERA. [note #29]

In fact, this publication, The Fabulous Antelope Valley, is a 1969 map book composed of reproduced U.S. Geologic Survey quadrangles covering the entire Antelope Valley region. Plotted out for the edification of potential investors is the route of the California Aqueduct, as well as a crisscrossed web of imagined freeways: the Metropolitan By-pass, the Ellis Tunnel (shown boring through mile after mile of the San Gabriel Mountains), the Barstow, and the Victorville freeways, and for good measure, an Antelope Highway.

The Antelope Valley truly envisioned itself as an upcoming megalopolis in its own right. The same map book goes on to announce in a strange typographic slurry:

WE ARE ON THE THRESHOLD OF A NEW AGE—THE AIR AGE—WHICH PROMISES TO ALTER LIFE AS WE KNOW IT MORE PROFOUNDLY THAN AT ANY OTHER PERIOD IN RECORDED HISTORY. THE NEW INTERCONTINENTAL METROPOLIS THAT PALMDALE WILL BECOME CAN TRULY BE THE FIRST CITY OF THE FUTURE, A COMPLETE DEPARTURE FROM THE MEGALOPOLIS WE ARE FAMILIAR WITH TODAY. Palmdale, as it grows with the new airport being planned to handle supersonic jets, WILL BECOME CALIFORNIA’S SECOND LARGEST CITY WITH A POPULATION OF 2 1/2 MILLION OR MORE. IT WILL EVENTUALLY BE ONE OF THE 20 LARGEST CITIES IN THE WORLD. IT WILL BE AN INTERNATIONAL CITY, A GATEWAY BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE REST OF THE WORLD. [note #30]

As evidence of this rise to world-city status, the unusually reserved author cites that

Several major MOTOR-HOTELS are being planned, complete with restaurants and banquet rooms.… Two new department stores are in operation and another one is under construction.… New HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS and GARDEN-APARTMENTS are being built… MOBILE HOME PARKS are filling up rapidly… RECREATIONAL AREAS of major magnitude are being planned. [note #31]

Boosting the Antelope Valley’s future was itself a growth industry judging from the fervor found in contemporary publications. A small book issued by the Pacific States Land Company in the early 1960s outlined how the Antelope Valley was the natural outlet for not only Los Angeles’s and California’s population growth, but implicitly growth of the world itself. Author R. J. Karlovich, a self-professed land speculator who ostensibly wants to share the “assured” land profits to be had in the Antelope Valley, devotes the first four chapters of his book to an Ehrlichian documentation of the coming world population explosion. The remainder of the book describes the Antelope Valley in utterly false terms, profusely illustrated with decontextualized photos of nature’s abundance and more of those hypersexy military aircraft. A bucolic photograph of a tree-lined small lake is captioned “One of the many beautiful lakes in the Antelope Valley.” [note #32] No natural lakes exist in the Antelope Valley except for the intermittent alkali sinks of Edwards Air Force Base. Another photo is of a massive concrete dam nestled in a coniferous forest setting, water pouring over its spillways; the caption reads “Water is plentiful in the Antelope Valley.” [note #33] In one of its endless phrases expressing a resplendent Arcadia awaiting the eager investor, the author writes,

The Antelope Valley is the only answer to the demand of industry, commerce, and people for more choice Southern California land. It is one of the finest locations in Southern California in which to build an industrial plant… to establish a business… to live the good California life that you, and millions of people like you have been seeking… There’s still enough land for sprawling ranch homes with barbecues in the back yard and swimming pools. [note #34]

Several eager investors are portrayed, regular folks like the presumed readership who ought to invest in Antelope Valley for their own good. Los Angeles area residents Tom and Mae Mortellaro are pictured and quoted:

Tom and Mae have this common hindsight story to tell: “We’ve seen this area [the Los Angeles Basin] explode from three million to 12 million people. We missed out on the San Fernando Valley and Anaheim land boom. We’re not going to miss out on the antelope valley boom!!” As Mae would say: “Darn you, Tom! Didn’t I tell you so!!!” [note #35]

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© Matt Jalbert 1995–2002