Holman, Zena, Mrs. W.R.

The proposal to move the state capital to Monterey was initiated in March 1938, by a group of citizens of the Monterey Peninsula, under the leadership of S.F.B. Morse, whose company owned a substantial acreage on the Monterey side of Carmel Hill, which was intended as the site of the state capital building and related office buildings. The Campaign had the support of State Senator Edward Tickle of Carmel, but not that of local Assemblyman Ellis Patterson, who became a candidate for lieutenant governor that year. A fund raising campaign, headed by T.A. Work and W.R. Holman, achieved the objective of $75,000. The money was spent on promotion of Monterey for its cooler-in-summer and milder weather overall, its coastal location, and its geographical position near the center of the state on a north-south division. But the efforts by Senator Tickle to induce his fellow senators to approve a state constitutional amendment for the move to Monterey died in the Senate constitutional committee in June 1939. Mr. Morse, in the same month, acknowledged that the campaign had come to an end. In 1945, when some legislators were angered by the accelerated costs of accommodations in Sacramento during World War II, the move proposal was revived, brought out of committee, but defeated on the floor by the full Senate.