This article considers the qualitative growth strategy that newspaper editor Thomas M. Storke promoted for the city of Santa Barbara, California,duringthe mid-twentiethcentury. It focuses on the role that his newspaper—the Santa Barbara News Press—played in “selling” to the community a federal water project that enabled Storke’s developmentvision for Santa Barbara to be realized. In elaboratingthis example of successful nonquantitative growth promotion, the article argues that boosterism is more complex than historians of the U.S. West have generally described it. Scholars should not necessarily consider towns and small cities that grew moderately or not at all during this period as cases of failed quantitative growth. Furthermore, their study may inform our understanding of how and why urban leaders have pursued multifaceted growth strategies more recently.
