Issue date: April 22, 1998

Sunset magazine: the first 92 years

The cover of the first issue of Sunset portrayed the sun setting beyond a pristine and bridgeless Golden Gate. Inside, like many Sunsets over the ensuing century, it featured the beauties of Yosemite and the High Sierra.

Named after the Southern Pacific's crack train, the Sunset Limited, the new magazine promoted travel and investment in the West, where the railroad owned three cross-country rail lines and more than 20 million acres of land suitable for mining, farming, industry and development.

Page 1 of the first issue invited the world to come to San Francisco (presumably by Southern Pacific) as a jumping off place to tap the enormous wealth of the "wonderful, gold-bearing Klondike."

Sunset never missed an issue. Even when the great fire following the 1906 earthquake destroyed its buildings as the May issue was on the presses, the publishers managed to get out a small, four-page emergency edition, which concluded, "Rapidly the city is becoming a bee-hive of activity, and ere long the imperishable spirit of San Francisco, clothed anew, will invite you within the gates of a new and greater metropolis of the Pacific."

By 1914, Sunset had met the goals of its founders, and it was sold to a group of employees on the eve of World War I, who ran it more as a literary journal. While they continued promoting the West, now thriving with the spread of the automobile, they also introduced political commentary and works by a growing group of western artists.

Distinguished commentators such as former Stanford President David Starr Jordan, Herbert Hoover, isolationist Senator William Borah, California Senator Hiram Johnson, naturalist Aldo Leopold, and local author Gertrude Atherton sounded off in its pages.

The magazine, now published by Woodhead, Field and Co., also stressed the culture of the West, featuring such well-known writers as Jack London, Mary Austin, Will James, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett and Zane Gray.

But wisdom and culture were not enough to pay the bills after the railroad withdrew its big bank account, and Sunset was near bankruptcy in 1928. "At this point the floundering journal was rescued by a young middle-westerner named Laurence W. Lane, who bought it lock, stock, and red-ink barrel," said his son, Bill.

From then until they sold Sunset in 1990, Larry and Ruth Lane's sons, Bill and Mel, were part of the Sunset enterprise. Armed with old magazines, posters and memories, they share their personal experiences, from the time their parents bought Sunset for $65,000 in 1928 until their sons sold it 62 years later to Time Warner for $225 million.

The Lane era: Depression through war

When he discovered Sunset, Larry Lane was advertising director of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. His wife, Ruth, was a home economist and avid gardener. They lived in Des Moines, Iowa.

"Traveling around the country, he realized the West was very different and needed its own voice," Mel Lane says of his father.

From its first issues, the new Sunset dropped its efforts in politics and culture, and focused primarily on families. It emphasized four areas: building, gardening, travel and cooking. It was written for people in the West, not just about them, so it didn't even sell subscriptions in the East.

The magazine continued to feature women's interests; Bill notes that his father brought in two women from Better Homes and Gardens, Lou Richardson and Genevieve Callahan, as co-editors. But Sunset wasn't just for women, he emphasizes. "It was for men and women and families, primarily for families who owned their own homes."

Less than a year after the first Lane issue, the country -- and Sunset with it -- was hit by the Great Depression. It was a difficult time, but Sunset weathered it, and managed to increase circulation. "The first profit was in 1938, Bill says, and the debt was finally eliminated in 1952.

He credits five policies for Sunset's success: Different editions for central, southwest and northwest regions to focus on differing western climates; selling subscriptions through charge accounts with leading department stores; selective advertising that excluded tobacco and liquor, and later some toxic pesticides; writing entirely by staff; and creation of Sunset Books.

During those years, Sunset was very much a family enterprise. The boys sold magazines door-to-door and worked in the San Francisco office on Saturdays. "We did flunky work, but we got to see what was going on," says Mel.

Before the days of Sunset's state-of-the-art test kitchens, Mrs. Lane tested recipes at home, and the boys were often guinea pigs. "I don't know if we did a lot of testing, but we did a lot of tasting," says Mel.

During World War II, while Bill and Mel served in the Navy, Sunset continued publishing. Even though the magazines were skinnier, they held all of Sunset's regular features, geared to the rationing of food and gas, and promoting "Victory Gardens." In fact Sunset received extra paper rations for its "Victory Garden Book," says Bill.

'Laboratory for western living'

Sunset was in the right place at the right time to ride the post-war boom and help shape new styles for living in the West.

After the war, Bill and Mel returned from the Navy and plunged into the magazine, and they began seriously learning the family business. Soon two important things happened: Sunset moved to Menlo Park from San Francisco in 1951; and Bill and Mel took over company operations from their father in 1952.

The Lanes had long wanted to move Sunset from San Francisco to the Peninsula, where suburbs were exploding -- as they were all over California -- with the flood of new immigrants wanting to enjoy the tempting western life promoted by the magazine.

After looking at several locations in the Bay Area -- "Hillsborough wouldn't have us," says Mel -- they settled on Menlo Park. Sunset was one of the first tenants in the city's innovative garden office zone, established under Mayor Charles Burgess. "There were no electric signs, no commercial retail and no manufacturing. It was perfect," says Mel.

Residential architect Cliff May designed his first commercial building to resemble an early Spanish ranch house. Set on seven acres adjacent to San Francisquito Creek, the adobe building with the patios and test kitchens was surrounded by spacious gardens designed by Thomas Church. "It became a laboratory for western living and a model for what the magazine promoted," says Bill.

The elegant new headquarters also became a popular tourist destination as Gray Line made it a stop on its tours, and residents brought friends and out-of-town visitors to peer into the kitchens and stroll through the gardens. There was a time when 75,000 people a year took the Sunset tour.

Although the Lane brothers often changed roles, Bill concentrated primarily on the magazine, while Mel took care of Sunset Books plus managing operations. The 1950s were an exciting time, as the magazine faced dual competition from the new medium of television and national magazines expanding into the new territory with regional editions modeled on Sunset. "We reveled in the competition," says Bill.

Sunset Books reinforced the how-to-do-it focus of the magazine by introducing inexpensive paperbacks at supermarkets, hardware stores and nurseries that told people how to build a deck, grow orchids, or cook with woks. "We started a series of paperbacks in the 1950s and put them with big retailers that didn't normally sell books," says Mel. "The books complemented the magazine and gave it greater visibility."

In addition to the "Sunset Western Garden Book" -- the bible for anyone who plants a pea west of the Rockies -- Sunset Books had 183 active titles in 1990.

Sunset has always been a resource for the community. Over the years the headquarters has provided a popular setting for many gatherings and events.

While never overtly political, Sunset under the Lane brothers was a strong force for conservation. In 1969 an article warning readers of the dangers of using DDT eventually led to laws banning the pesticide. "We literally blew the whistle on DDT," says Bill. "We also stopped accepting advertising for it."

When the energy crisis hit, Sunset began proclaiming conservation and solar energy. During back-to-back drought years, it promoted ways to use less water in homes and gardens. It has always supported preservation of California's scenic treasures -- parks, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, and beautiful places people like to visit.

While Sunset encouraged drought gardening and energy efficiency in its pages, the Lane brothers worked personally on a larger stage for preservation of resources and effective government. "Sunset was our platform," Bill says. "Mel and I both had a wonderful base at Sunset. It was a perfect mix of our business and personal interests."

Bill is proud of calling the meeting in Sunset's Menlo Park offices that hammered out differences between the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League to arrive at the final boundaries of Redwood National Park.

Bill Lane has been active on the local, national and international scene. He is still an elder statesman in Portola Valley, where he worked hard for incorporation in 1964, and served on the first Town Council. He has been active promoting national parks, and served as ambassador-at-large to Japan, and later ambassador to Australia.

Mel Lane has been a leader in controlling the growth that threatened to fill San Francisco Bay and line the California coast with sprawl. He was first chairman of the pioneering Bay Conservation and Development Commission, then the California Coastal Commission.

This past April 3, Mel Lane received the annual award from the California League of Conservation Voters, which said of his work: "If you take a look around California, you would be hard pressed to find a place of beauty that Mel hasn't played a part in preserving."

Sunset continued to grow and thrive along with the West it served. By the end of the Lane era, it had long since expanded to Hawaii and Alaska. There were test gardens in the north, south and desert climates, and another regional edition for the mountain states. The Menlo Park campus had grown from one to four buildings.

Bill Lane gave the numbers that tell the story. Between 1929 and 1990, circulation grew from around 100,000 to 1.4 million. The price went from 10 cents a copy to $1.95, and the size went from some 38 pages to upwards of 200.



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