User:Richard Stuart Otto

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Richard S. Otto, 68 who named and developed Baywood Park and for years was its most colorful and controversial resident, died Friday in a Santa Barbara hospital. A widely-known engineer, he ran unsuccessfully for U. S. Senator from California in a 1940 primary against the late Sen. Hiram Johnson. Six years earlier, he managed Upton Sinclair's famous but un successful End Poverty in California campaign for governor. Mr. Otto moved to Montecito in 1964 after residing permanently in Baywood Park for 15 years. But he had developed the community many years before, and had grown many of its Monterey Pines from seed in a Los Angeles apartment box-window. Son of a wealthy, Eastern family, Mr. Otto was born in East Orange, N. J. He was educated in private schools in this country and in France, Germany and Switzerland. During World War I, he worked with noted military inventor Carl Norden and later did the engineering for the Norden Bombsight. It was considered one of the most significant Allied secrets and technical masterpieces of World War II. About 1920, Otto was sent by his father, a New York banker, on a month-long mission to the court of Chinese warlord Wu Pei Fu, to discus a huge loan. He decided against granting it. In 1921, realtor-historian Walter Redfield, long of Baywood Park, sold Otto his first Baywood Park lot for $165. Otto became interested in the San Luis Obispo County and became sales manager of Redfield's Los Angeles office. Then Otto, with financial backing from his father, purchased all the remaining lots in the townsite. Because of a conflict in the names El Moro and Morro Bay, Otto changed the name to Baywood Park and began development in 1924. At one time, he owned about 1,000 acres in the community, but over the years had sold most of them. He still owned the Baywood Lodge and Restaurant, and the Cambria Quicksilver Mine. In the early 1930's, Otto met Socialist Upton Sinclair--noted muckraking novelist and author--at a meeting of the Bellamy Society. He, Sinclair and others conceived the idea of the EPIC campaign, and all registered as Democrats. Sinclair was defeated in 1934 by Frank Merriam in one of the most famous gubernatorial campaigns in California history. When it was over, Otto bought an 85-foot yacht, the Coquet, and lived on it four years, making several trips to the South Seas. As a Democrat, he was one of several unsuccessful candidates for U. S. Senator against Sen. Hiram Johnson in 1940. Over the years, Otto published the Baywood Observer, a newspaper, "spasmodically", in his words. Mr. Otto had undergone surgery in January, and had a succession of illnesses since. Arrangements are under the direction of the Channel City Funeral Society. He had asked that in lieu of flowers friends donate to a peace organization. His survivors include his widow, Mrs. Shirley Otto of Montecito; a son by a previous marriage, Henry Stuart Otto of Arlington, Va., and a sister, Countess Editha de Beaumont of New York City.

from the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune (California) 10 March 1966