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9. Contested Libraries
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209 9 Contested Libraries “It has engendered more bitterness than any question that has ever arisen within the town” As previous chapters of this book have documented, most successful Carnegie library building grant applications from the Intermountain West encountered only temporary and ephemeral obstacles. Carnegie’s own requirements delayed some, while economic obstacles and/or site selection posed difficulties in others. But in the vast majority of these interior West communities, citizens’ belief in a public library’s ability to serve common agendas insured that the work went forward as expeditiously as possible. In four Intermountain West communities, however, Carnegie library applications encountered such bitter contention that their completion became doubtful for a time. In each, discussions touched deeper jealousies and social divisions that made Carnegie libraries into flashpoints for pre-existing factionalism. As citizens in these places debated their Carnegie libraries, they were also debating who would control the evolving physical shape of their communities, who would dominate local decision making. Alturas, California In Alturas, nearly everybody agreed that a Carnegie library grant was worth supporting. The trouble was that by the time the application was tendered, the community was so deeply fractured by resentment and jealousy that the application’s details could not help but be caught in this spirit. Alturas’s Carnegie application might have looked like a typical boomtown project except for this rancor, for the community was coming rapidly Books, Bluster, and Bounty 210 into its own when it applied late in the first decade of the twentieth century . Prosperity had been long in coming. The earliest settlers had arrived around 1864 to homestead and ranch, but only after the Modoc Indian War of 1872–73 brutally cleared the area for Anglo development was the townsite (first called Dorris Bridge) established and made a county seat. Growth was initially slow, however, for Alturas was located deep within extreme northeastern California’s lava country, lacking rail connections to the outside world. The closest incorporated communities lay many hours’ travel away, and for thirty years Alturas went about its insular business as a market center for surrounding ranches.1 In 1908, though, the Nevada, California, and Oregon Railroad (“narrow, crooked, and ornery”) began building through the region. The community’s newspaper predicted that the area was “now at a transition stage,” on the verge of growth and prosperity.2 Like residents of the boom towns described in chapter 3, Alturas’s city officials sought a Carnegie library as an appropriate addition to their presumably up-and-coming community, and they obtained a $7,500 promise in November 1908, which they managed to raise to $10,000.3 Soon, however, two developers—called with disrespectful familiarity only “Dunaway and Oliver” in the local newspaper—had blighted the community ’s optimistic mood.4 The NC&O, these men argued, would certainly bypass Alturas unless a site for a railroad terminal was made available. Given the way the track was tending, the best zone would be just north of the original townsite. If the community would allow them to purchase this tract at a favorable rate, they would handle the negotiations. Nervous city officials did grant that request, the land was donated, the NC&O constructed its terminal, and trains began stopping in Alturas’s vicinity. Then Dunaway and Oliver revealed their ulterior motives. Rather than deeding all the land to the NC&O (as they had implied they would do), they kept most of it for themselves and began platting a town of their own, Alturas Heights, around the terminal. They convinced Modoc County officials that Alturas Heights, with its rail link, was destined to supplant Alturas as the region’s business center, won the new county high school, and 1 The history of Alturas is discussed in Tierney, History of Modoc County, in “Looking Back: 100 Years of the Record,” 3, and in Dorothy and Catherine Glaster, “History of Alturas.” 2 Ibid., 9. 3 Alturas (CA) Plaindealer, Oct. 23, 1908. 4 The story of the developers’ dealings with Alturas in reviewed in Ibid., July 2, 1909. [44.192.51.19] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:11 GMT) Contested Libraries 211 began lobbying for county and federal government buildings. Aggressive boosting drew new residents to Alturas Heights. Those invested in the old city center fumed that the developers had “cut the people’s throats” and called the two “highwaymen.”5 This resentment infected the site selection process for Alturas’s Carnegie library. Since the community’s Women’s Improvement Club had...