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closeWe’re starting to hear about Colony Days around town as the volunteer committee gears up for another celebration of the founding of Atascadero 96 years ago. A number of local businesses have the word “Colony” in them. Even the title of this column is “About the Colony.”
But the man who founded Atascadero soon disliked the term. In the spring of 1921 he announced he wanted to change the name from his original “Colony Holding Corporation” to something different.
A contest published in his periodicals, including the Atascadero News and Illustrated Review, resulted in more than 100 suggestions coming from throughout the United States.
Lewis said that the word “colony” when used referring to his new community was very much misunderstood.
“This is not a Colony,” he penned in 1921, explaining that, “Some believe it is some sort of religious, socialist or cooperative when in fact it is a place where it is entirely free from any such restrictions or theories.”
Some of the entries included, “Atascadero Eden Corporation,” Atascadero Orchard and Poultry Company,” “Atascadero Ideal Estates,” “Atascadero Paradise Corporation” and “Atascadero Progressive Corporation.”
Many more names were published in the summer of 1921 on the front page of the local newspaper. The name finally selected was “The Atascadero Estates.”
A column in the Atascadero News, more than likely written by Lewis, but possibly his editor, L.D. Beckwith, stated, “Atascadero is a place where there is the widest possible religious tolerance. The only restrictions are in building restrictions which prevent the construction of things detrimental to the best home conditions.”
“In the Atascadero Estates,” Lewis wrote that, “Any person who wants to love his neighbor as himself and give everybody his rights and live in peace and harmony with those who differ from him in religion, politics and economics will find Atascadero the ideal place in which to live and practice those virtues.”
Lewis had only recently convinced more than 20 religious denominations to join together into a single church, in a building his corporation would build that would serve as a place of worship on Sunday and a community center the other six days of the week.
Unfortunately, at the time of all these proclamations about lack of restrictions and Atascadero being a place “in which to live and practice those virtues” were community-wide deed restrictions that limited the sale of property and even its resale to “members of the Caucasian race.”
The court approved the new name in August 1921.
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