1. Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 96-7; Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 101.[Back]
2. Worster, Rivers of Empire, 101-2. [Back]
3. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (1984; reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 38. [Back]
4. Charles William Mulhall, Jr., "Sunset: The History of a Successful Regional Magazine" (M.A. thesis, Stanford University, 1955), 1-2. [Back]
5. Earl Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), 131. [Back]
6. Southern Pacific, like other railroad companies, employed agents in Europe. Ray Allen Billington, Land of Savagery, Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1981), 64.[Back]
7. Frank Norris, The Octopus (1900; reprint, New York: New American Library, 1964).[Back]
8. Charles Fletcher Lummis, editor of Land of Sunshine, a competitor of sorts to Sunset, fought hard. (and often losing) battles to prevent the loss or disfigurement of California place names. He found the U.S. Postal Service and the railroads to be the most flagrant offenders and his campaign focused upon them. Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis: Editor of the Southwest (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955), 83-4. [Back]
9. Gerald D. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century: A Short Study of an Urban Oasis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973), 45. [Back]
10. Pomeroy, In Search of the Golden West, 125. [Back]
11. Cit. in Oscar Osburn Winther, "The Use of Climate as a Means of Promoting Migration to Southern. California," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33 (December 1946), 412. [Back]
12. "The West: Looking Ahead... From 60 yearsí Experience," Sunset, 120 (May 1958), 3-6. [Back]
13. Sunset, 18 (February 1907), 275-95. [Back]
14. On womenís relations to the automobile, see Virginia Scharff, Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age (New York: The Free Press, 1991). [Back]
15. Sandra L. Myers, Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800-1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 269. See also Joan M. Jensen and Gloria Ricci Lothrop, eds., California Women: A History (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser Publishing Company, 1987). [Back]
16. Earle Labor et al., The Letters of Jack London, 3 vols. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 1: 502. [Back]
17. William H. Goetzman, The West of the Imagination (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 318-19. [Back]
18. Quoted in Alfred Runte, "Promoting the Golden West: Advertising and the Railroad," California History no.1, vol.70 (Spring 1991), 63. [Back]
19. Sunset, no.3, vol.11 (July 1903), 210. [Back]
20. Donovan L. Hofsommer, The Southern Pacific, 1901-1985 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), 67. [Back]
21. "Announcement to the Readers of Sunset," Sunset, October 1914, David Starr Jordan Archive, SC 58, Special Collections, Stanford University (hereafter DSJ Collection). [Back]
22. "Sunset Gets Into Line," Sunset, December 1915. [Back]
23. Jane Apostol, "Lute Pease of the Pacific Monthly," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 74 (July 1983): 104. [Back]
24. "Announcement to the Readers of Sunset," October 1914. [Back]
25. William Holtz, "Jack Londonís First Biographer," Western American Literature 27 (Spring 1992): 22. [Back]
26. Gerald D. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973), 121. [Back]
27. Edwin R. Bingham, Charles F. Lummis: Editor of the Southwest (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1955), 156. [Back]
28. Karen S. Langlois, "A Fresh Voice From the West: Mary Austin, California, and American Literary Magazines, 1892-1910," California History (Spring 1990): 22. [Back]
29. Walter V. Woehlke to David Starr Jordan, 27 December 1923, DSJ Collection. [Back]
30. Walter V. Woehlke to David Starr Jordan, 6 August 1919, DSJ Collection. [Back]
31. Walter V. Woehlke to David Starr Jordan, 13 October 1915, DSJ Collection. [Back]
32. Amy Janello and Brennon Jones, The American Magazine (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1991), 184.[Back]
33. Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 95. [Back]
34. Nash, The American West, 136-37. [Back]
35. "To the Stockholders of Sunset Magazine," 15 October 1928, DSJ Collection. Had the magazine enjoyed earlier profits under the new management (i.e., had the Depression not intervened), the outgoing stockholders might have realized up to $162,176 under the terms of the purchase agreement, taking into account a percentage of future profits and assuming current debt. The total payment, however, eventually worked out to about $60,000. [Back]
36. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (1954; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988), 2. [Back]
37. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties (1931; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1964), 156. [Back]
38. L. W. Lane, Jr., The Sunset Story: "To Serve the Westerner...And No One Else" (New York: Newcomen Society in North American, 1973), 16-17. Address delivered at the National Dinner of The Newcomen Society, San Francisco, Calif., 15 May 1969. [Back]
39. Biographical Sketch--Ruth B. Lane," Vertical File, Cowles Library, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. [Back]
40. "To the Stockholders of Sunset Magazine," Jordan Collection. [Back]
41. Neil Morgan, Westward Tilt: The American West Today (New York: Random House, 1963), 17. [Back]
42. Charles William Mulhall, Jr., "Sunset: The History of a Successful Regional Magazine" (M.A. thesis, Stanford University, 1955), 26. [Back]
43. Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964), 383. [Back]
44. Bill Lane to the author, January 23, 1998. The author acknowledges Bill Laneís guidance leading toward the preparation of this essay. [Back]
45. Gerald D. Nash, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 178-79. [Back]
46. Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The Nineteen-Thirties in America (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1940), 28. [Back]
47. Gerald D. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century: A Short History of an Urban Oasis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973), 139-40. [Back]
48. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 229. [Back]
49. The Years of Paper: Isedore Zellerbach, 1866-1941 ([San Francisco]: Crown Zellerbach Corporation, 1941), 13. [Back]
50. Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century, 112. [Back]
51. Mulhall, "Sunset," 42. [Back]
52. Proctor Mellquist [Managing Editor of Sunset], "Sunset Is Unique as a Magazine," Quill 42 (February 1954): 13. [Back]
53. Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century, 386. [Back]
54. Lane, The Sunset Story, 19. [Back]
55. David E. Faville, How Sunset Magazine Subscribers Evaluate the Magazines They Read: A Study of Magazine Preferences (Stanford, CA: Graduate School of Business, 1940). [Back]
56. James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941, 2nd ed. (Baltimore, ML: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 64. [Back]
57. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century, 218. [Back]
58. Nash, The American West Transformed, 62-63. [Back]
59. Morgan, Westward Tilt, 17; "A Walking Tour of the Sunset Garden" [leaflet] (Menlo Park: Sunset Publishing Corporation, n.d.). [Back]
60. Lane, The Sunset Story, 22. [Back]
61. Chuck Y. Gee and Matt Lurie, eds., The Story of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (San Francisco: Pacific Asia Travel Association, 1993), 49-50. [Back]
62. "A Walking Tour of the Sunset Garden." [Back]
63. Sunset Western Ranch Houses (San Francisco: Lane Publishing Company, 1946), 23. [Back]
64. Mulhall, "Sunset," 73. [Back]
65. Lane, The Sunset Story, 21-22. [Back]
66. "Sunsect Magazine: A Parody," The New West (11 February 1980): 27-35. [Back]
67. Jennifer Curtis and Tim Profeta, After Silent Spring: The Unsolved Problems of Pesticide Use in the United States (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council, 1993), 3. [Back]
68. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962), 20. [Back]
69. Bill Lane, "Letter From Sunset," Sunset (November 1989): 230-31. [Back]
70. Michael L. Johnson, New Westers: The West in Contemporary American Culture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 360. [Back]
71. Sunset Western Market Almanac (Menlo Park, CA: Lane Publishing Company, 1989). [Back]
72. Wallace Stegner and Richard W. Etulain, Conversations With Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature, rev. ed. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 127. [Back]
73. The author would like to thank Steve Seabolt (CEO) and Jim Mitchell (CFO) for sharing their knowledge and opinions on Sunset magazine during an interview on 26 November 1997; and Lisa Anderson of Sunset Book Inc. for reviewing this article. [Back]
74. Connie Bruck, Master of the Game: Steve Ross and the Creation of Time Warner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 64, 252. For a brief history of the Time Warner merger, see 246-81. [Back]
75. Interoffice Memorandum, Bill and Mel Lane to Sunset employees and retirees, 27 March 1990. [Back]
76. S. Christopher Meager III, remarks made to the staff of Sunset, 27 March 1990. Copy of transcript in possession of author. [Back]
77. Newsstand issues increased by $1.00 to $2.50 (67 percent increase) when Time Warner took over. Newsstand issues cost currently $3.50. [Back]
78. Earl Pomeroy, Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 384. [Back]
79. James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 15. [Back]
80. For demographics on Sunset readers, see Margaret L. Beck, ed., Sunset Western Market Almanac, 1989-1990 (Menlo Park, CA: Sunset Magazine, 1989), 74-79; Katherine Grace Fry, "Old South, Agrarian Midwest and Frontier West: Discourses of Repression and Consumption in Southern Living, Midwest Living, and Sunset Magazines" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1994), 227-28. [Back]
81. "At Sunset, Another Day Is About to Dawn," New York Times, 10 February 1996. [Back]
82 Richard White, "Itís Your Own Misfortune and None of My Own:" A New History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 546. [Back]
83 Richard White, "The Current Weirdness in the West," Western Historical Quarterly 28 (Spring 1997), 5. [Back]
84. Karen Hudes, "Not the Same Old Story," Folio, September 1997, 15. [Back]
85. Lorraine Calvacca, "Publishers Heed Natureís Call," Folio, June 1997, 20-21. [Back]
86. Karen Hudes, "Adventures in Travel Publishing," Folio, October 1997, 15. [Back]
87. For an analysis of under-representation of current non-White groups in magazines, see Fry, "Old South, Agrarian Midwest and Frontier West," 251; see also her chapter "Representation of Non-Whites," 129-152. [Back]
88. Sunset also has created a Web site of its own, at http://www.Sunsetmagazine.com/. The URL for Sunset material on the Time Warner Pathfinder Virtual Gardener Web site, as of February 1998, is http:pathfinder.com/vg/Magazine-Rack/Sunset/. [Back]