"Road Trips" by The Old Squid
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the
Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be
swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins
Monterey 2003, Part 4
Big Trees and Small Towns
posted 10/08/03
After our conversations about tourist economies with our friends in Orleans, my wife and I were looking for examples of successful towns as we drove thru Northern California. Some towns are still working towns though none of the smaller ones. It used to be that people didn't drive far to shop and small towns furnished what we needed in general stores. Now people want not just brand name items but brand name stores to shop at. The larger towns can support the malls that these stores require. When they grow, they start sucking the economic life out of anything within driving distance.
Small towns seem to be left with three options. One is to whither, die, and blow away. We saw this in town after town in the northern area. The logging that supported them is gone and they die a slow death. Old hotels are quaint unless they can't afford a final coat of paint to inhibit the rot. At first they are cozy and look quaintly downscale. Next comes the vacant building stage. Finally the collapsing building stage when broken windows are boarded up. If it's really old, it can be a Ghost Town and maybe have a new life as a tourist attraction. Others just let the blackberries take over.
I'm convinced that some day in the far future, if we ever move off earth those that return will find a large green ball. Closer investigation will reveal it to be a worldwide blackberry thicket. All evidence of humans will be covered!
Another option is the tourist route. This presupposes that your town has something that a tourist would want. And it comes at a price…your soul!
Economic and social purpose are what bring towns into existence. If a town is in an area that has something that people want to see the tourism proceeds naturally and demand is a function of the attraction and some marketing. Friday Harbor does this with the whale watching business and the scenery. We saw many towns that did this with the redwoods and views along the coast. You are beholden to the economy and the seasons. If you attraction goes away, you are dead! But as long as people come to see an attraction the town can exist as a viable "community".
The worst option is for a town to sell itself. Its charm or its past. When that happens what's created is a petting zoo for locals. Think Leavenworth or LaConner. In California it's Ferndale south of Eureka. Ferndale is a relentlessly Victorian town that legislates the color of paint you can put on your house. At least it's authentic Victorian, built around the turn of the century by Scandinavian dairy farmers but its too squeaky clean and smug to be a real home. Leavenworth is worse in that there never was any Bavarian or German heritage there in the first place. The theme was arrived at as a cold-blooded attempt to grab tourists out of Seattle.
Now many of you may have stopped at these towns and appreciated some aspect of them. My Fearless Wife loves the quilt shops in Leavenworth, but would you want to live there? Would it be a home that you children would be proud of coming from or one that they couldn't wait to leave?
We saw one nice, successful town as we went down 101. Hopland. Surrounding the town are vineyards and wineries. The town also has some small manufacturing businesses. Producing and growing things look to be the best of all possible worlds for small towns. Hopland had no boarded up storefronts and many small prosperous stores. As we headed south to Monterey, I thought about this and the implications for Friday Harbor. I also thought about Cannery Row in Monterey. Pure tourism, selling the memory of working men who would run from what it had become and couldn't afford what it had to offer.
The Old Squid
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