Up until the 1970s, California was a state known for its commitment to boundless opportunities, with the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown governorship reflective of the can-do spirit that drew people here from across the world. Given the degree to which modern California is noted for its ineffectiveness, wastefulness, and regulatory sclerosis, it's difficult to imagine a California that took its Golden State moniker seriously.
Brown "envisioned a future in which economic growth would be driven by a network of state-of-the-art freeways to move people, reservoirs, and canals to capture and transport water and intellectual capital from low-cost institutions of higher education. He sold that vision to the public and, in doing so, as the late historian Kevin Starr wrote, putting California on "the cutting edge of the American experiment," per a Hoover Institution retrospective. The state grew dramatically as a result.
The Brown administration built most of the State Water Project in less time than it would take to complete an Environmental Impact Report these days. California officials still have big dreams, of course, but they are more of the social-engineering variety than the civil-engineering type. Brown built freeways that people actually use, whereas today's big project is a pointless high-speed rail line that's way over budget and unlikely to serve any serious need.
