Chautauqua: A Grove of Trees, A Body of Water

Certainly no history of Pacific Palisades can be understood without knowledge of the Chautauqua movement, a phenomenon that grew out of the religious revival in the late 19th century, manifested in Protestant camp meetings across the United States. After the Civil War, large groups of people were attracted to the exhortations of evangelists who brought a personal message of salvation. At the same time, the lyceum movement began to flourish, which offered ordinary people the opportunity to expand their knowledge through the study of history, art, science and public issues. The Chautauqua movement grew out these social, religious and educational impulses that average middle class Americans enjoyed with their newfound leisure time following the Industrial Revolution. We can think of the Chautauqua assemblies as summer camps for adults with a religious, intellectual and recreational component. John Vincent, a Methodist minister from New Jersey who was involved in the countrywide Sunday school movement, and Lewis Miller, a successful businessman from Ohio who was superintendent of his Methodist Sunday school, founded the original Chautauqua in upstate New York. Both men valued Sunday school education, which in the late 19th- century was often the only opportunity ordinary people had for formal education. The men proposed offering a summer school to prepare Sunday school teachers, and opted to hold the first Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly in 1874 ‘in the woods’ on Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York, chosen for its convenience, ‘midway between Chicago and New York, and accessible by two railroad lines.’ ‘Chautauqua’ is an American Indian word that has been given several different meanings, among the most popular being a ‘bag tied in the middle,’ which describes Lake Chautauqua’s hourglass shape. The notion of holding the meeting outdoors was in tune with a popular belief at the time that nature has spiritual, inspirational and even curative powers, and displays the hand of God. In her new book ‘Frontier Chautauqua: The Chautauqua Movement on the Pacific Coast,’ Palisadian Betty Lou Young describes the extraordinary scope of these community gatherings, and characterizes in successive chapters the unique assemblies that took root in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Idaho. A noted historian and co-author of the definitive history of Pacific Palisades (‘From the Mountains to the Sea’), Young was logically the best one to bring this integral part of American education into a book, although, she says, her early knowledge of the Chautauqua movement was thin. ‘When Randy (son and co-author Randy Young) and I were asked to write a history of Pacific Palisades, I had only two connections with a Chautauqua: I grew up in Long Beach, the site of a large Chautauqua, and my husband Tom almost drowned in a swimming pool in Elsa, Illinois, the site of another Chautauqua on the Mississippi River.’ Chautauquas began to spring up around the country, spurred on by the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle students who were unable to make the long trip east to attend summer courses offered by the ‘mother’ Chautauqua. The ‘circles’ were sort of correspondence courses based on a letters and sciences curriculum, which by 1900 had an enrollment of more than 2.5-million students. Many communities started their own Chautauqua patterned after the New York Chautauqua Institution, and by the turn of the century, between 200 and 300 communities had established Chautauquas. Pacific Palisades was the site of the last, most ambitious Chautauqua, Young says. An outgrowth of the Methodist’s Chautauqua assemblies, the Palisades Chautauqua was always intended to be more than a summer assembly; it was to incorporate a town, from the beginning. As with many Chautauquas, the idea was to sell lots, with the proceeds helping to support the programs. Patterned on the ‘mother’ circle in upstate New York, the Palisades location was ideal. As with all outlying assembly leaders, the Palisades founders strived to emulate the original by locating their site in a grove of trees and on or near a body of water. ‘If the grove didn’t occur naturally, one was planted, and the bodies of water ranged from trickling brooks to frontage on the Pacific Ocean,’ Young writes. Dr. Charles Scott, charged with finding a location for a growing Methodist community in Los Angeles, held the first Methodist summer camp meeting in Rustic Canyon on a site that today remains the historic eucalyptus grove. He chose the level mesa to the west for the town. Pacific Palisades officially came into being in 1922, and the first Chautauqua and summer assembly began in Temescal Canyon that summer. For many years, large gatherings were held at the outdoor amphitheater, which held 1,600. Meals were served in the cafeteria (which still stands). Guests lived in tents or casitas, and the large assembly hall (tabernacle) hosted a variety of programs and lectures. Highlight of the first season was a performance by the world’s greatest contralto Madame Schumann-Heink. Other celebrities included Dr. Rufus B. von Klein Smid, president of USC, poet philosopher James W. Foley and a young baritone named Lawrence Tibbett. The opening of the new campus for UCLA in Westwood in 1929 also provided a broad range of intellectual talent for Pacific Palisades. Nationwide, the Chautauquas drew speakers from all fields, often men who were as renowned for their rhetorical flair as for the subject at hand. William Jennings Bryan, a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement and one of the most popular speakers in American history with his deep, commanding voice, was a popular draw. President Theodore Roosevelt was an anticipated speaker at the Yosemite Chautauqua, and John Muir gave lectures and led nature walks at the 1879 Yosemite assembly. Topics were controversial, such as women’s suffrage and evolution, but balanced with speakers on both sides of the issue. The aim of the founders was to provide learning with a religious bent, but without sectarian bias, in the belief that such programs would have a broad appeal for knowledge-hungry visitors. Although Young has traversed the Pacific Coast many times and visited numerous Chautauqua sites along the way, which she includes in her book, two favorites stand out. ‘Perhaps La Grande really got to me more than any other one,’ she says of the site on the banks of the Grande Ronde River in eastern Oregon. ‘There it is, way out in the east; there’s nothing out there. It feels like the bleakness of the Oregon Trail. But to those people, the Chautauqua meant so much. They believed so deeply in its values for opportunities for learning.’ La Grande was once touted as the pioneer Chautauqua assembly town in eastern Oregon, bringing music, light entertainment and philosophy right to the threshold, but the story ends sadly, as in the waning years the independent-spirited town struggled with recruiting talent. In what turned out to be the last summer (1924), they had invited three speakers to talk on utterly ridiculous topics, Young says. ‘The attendance was sparse, and due to the lack of printed programs, a large part of the audience left at intermission.’ On the other hand, Young picks Gladstone Park in the Willamette Valley and the third largest Chautauqua in the country after New York and Ocean Grove in New Jersey, as ‘the darndest place.’ ‘Eva Emery Dye ran it for 33 years and recruited great speakers, including rabbis and African Americans, and very daring programs, such as women’s suffrage,’ Young says. ‘She believed that ‘its intellectual privileges were meant to apply equally to college men and women and to worn-out farmers’ wives, teachers, preachers, and working men.” Although it survived for 35 years, Gladstone became more of a commercial enterprise, as did many assemblies, as they began to rely more on the Chautauqua circuit’s booking agency for ‘talent.’ Over the years, Young has visited Gladstone several times. She has befriended the head of the historical society and attended the summer festival, which they still call a Chautauqua. Events include games, carnival rides, tours of historic houses and Senior Citizens Day, featuring the crowning of a local resident as ‘Queen Victoria’ and recognition of her prime minister, ‘William Gladstone’–a surprise bestowed on Betty Lou and Randy one summer. Today, there are about 15 Chautauquas going strong across the country, and another 20 or 25 exist in some form, including the Chautauqua speakers’ series, sponsored by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy at the site of the original site in Temescal Canyon. Young has spent 20 years researching and writing this book, interrupted, she says, by other books, including the ‘Street Names of the Palisades’ and ‘Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk through History,’ yet her knowledge and fondness for all the sites she has visited remains fresh and lively. ‘I can smell a Chautauqua,’ she says. ‘I can go through a town, whether it’s Northampton, Massachusetts, or Biloxi, Mississippi. There is a feeling you get, where there is a grove of trees near a body of water, a funny feeling of peace.’