Mark E. Kann Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica, Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1986, 322 pp., 1960s, 1949, 1940, 1930s
". . . Santa Monica's small businessmen were always willing to work with government and accede to its intervention in the marketplace. They supported city-owned and operated amusement piers that helped the resort economy; they welcomed New Deal programs that enhanced the local environment, including a Federal Arts Project that placed a statue of the city's namesake in Palisades Park and a Federal Emergency Public Works Project that built Santa Monica's impressive city hall . . .
"Santa Monica peacefully evolved from a small resort town into a middle-sized city of 50,000 residents by 1940 . . . A few Hollywood figures bought oceanfront homes on Santa Monica's Gold Coast and some Los Angeles garment workers retired to modest bungalows and apartments in Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood . . .
"Southern California was also on the brink of the Automobile Age. In the 1930s, General Motors bought up the Pacific Electric Railway system to scrap it. The corporation replaced trains with diesel buses that it manufactured. The buses did not carry freight, so merchants were forced to buy or rent trucks that General Motors also manufactured. The buses were uncomfortable and unreliable, which encouraged Southern Californians to purchase automobiles that General Motors gladly sold to them. The corporation was convicted in 1949 of having conspired to replace municipal transit systems with products that it monopolized. The $5,000 fine, however, did not deter General Motors from continuing its practices or from putting its considerable weight behind the $70 billion Interstate Highway Act that reinforced consumer demand for automobiles by underwriting massive highway construction throughout the United States.
"For Santa Monica, the fallout from this corporate maneuvering was the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway in the mid-1960s . . ."