Californicate

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:08 AM -0800 3/22/02, James Smith wrote:
>The first use of "californicate" I remember was during
>the Colorado citizens campaign against the 1976 Winter
>Olympics.  Denver had been awarded the 1976 Winter
>Olympics, but a grassroots coalition helped pull the
>plug.  The winter games were switched to Innsbruck
>after CO passed a law making it illegal to pay for
>events like the Olympics with state taxes. I believe
>the law was passed in 1972, so "californicate" should
>be in Denver newspapers from the early 70's.
>
I mentioned in my earlier post
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For some reason neither the verb nor the derived noun are in RHHDAS,
but the evidence I just collected on Nexis seems to suggest the
earliest references were bumper stickers imploring locals in various
Western states "DON'T CALIFORNICATE COLORADO/IDAHO/OREGON", with the
Colorado ones possibly being the earliest.  (By Jan. 1977 articles
were already noting that "the bloom was off the environmentalist
rose" and that unbridled development was now rampant in the area
where 'bumper stickers once proclaimed "Don't Californicate
Colorado".')
=======
This does indeed seem consistent with the time and place you mention.
The lack of earlier Nexis cites than the January 1977 doesn't
disprove this, of course, and the use of "once" in the text suggests
that the bumper stickers may well have appeared in the early 70's.

larry