The new town spent 1952 learning to be one. Incorporation was barely a year old, and the unglamorous work of municipal existence — ordinances, zoning, the western storefront rules that turned Malcolm White’s marketing into law — occupied a government that hadn’t existed the previous summer. The slogan was on the letterhead; the machinery behind it was still being bolted together.
The boom’s ingredients were assembled and warming. Postwar migration kept delivering veterans’ families to the Valley, the storefronts along Fifth Avenue and Main Street were filling with the artisans scattered by the 1950 Craft Center fire, and the tourist trade was growing into the “West’s Most Western Town” pitch. Within a year the Jaycees would give the brand its annual ritual with the first Parada del Sol; within two, Motorola would arrive with year-round payrolls. For the period’s full story, see the 1950s chapter.