Page:Motoring Magazine and Motor Life January 1915.djvu/13

, 1915. Covina, Pomona and other cities? Out in the west edge of Pomona nearly every residence property has two walnut trees in front of it, and those trees annually produce more cooling shade and more English walnuts than the people who reside there can consume.

Why shouldn't each city and county produce enough walnuts or almonds, along the streets and highways, to more than pay the expense of keeping up the highway system? Along some of the roads in and around Redlands there are thousands of olive trees which produce about $10 worth of olives per tree each year.

Near that city, for about two miles on both sides of one railroad right of way, productive olive trees stand as a protection for the adjacent orange groves, and are at the same time ornamental, although we have many kinds of fruitful trees which are more ornamental than the olive.

The climate of California is so moderate that all parts of the State are suitable for the production of fruit and nut-bearing trees, but Southern California is so especially blessed with warm weather that it can produce even the tenderest trees such as the pili nut, the avacado, the almond and the mango. Hence there is little excuse for not planting some sort of productive tree along the streets and highways.

Up to the present time the work of keeping up the systematic planting of highway and street shade trees has been a serious drain on city and county treasuries, and it seems as though it would be a splendid plan to begin planting something that would pay its way and even contribute to the highway fund, rather than be an everlasting burden and expense.

It doesn't cost any more to prune and care for a productive tree than it costs to take care of an unproductive shade tree. So why keep the profitless cow?

The United States doesn't produce one-third as many English walnuts as she consumes annually. Hence it would seem that we could do worse than plant a few miles of English walnuts along the highways in counties where they thrive.

Let each county select the variety of productive tree that looks best and produces steadily there, and let's cut out the big item of the overhead expense that we are constantly accumulating in the systematic planting of shade trees along our streets and highways.

Supposing the poor folks do steal a few bags of nuts or a few boxes of fruit along the road. Well, if they go out and forage for their livelihood there will be fewer poorly nourished children in the families of the laboring classes, and there will be fewer candidates for lifetime passes to the poor farm.

The day is coming in California, and it is not many years distant, when we will not only want to but will have to make every foot of land produce something. So why plant unproductive trees along our highways and have to dig down in our pockets year after year to support them?

There is no real progress in temporary improvement, and that is really the kind of improvement we are doing in our tree warden work to-day, in nearly every community where the work is being done.

Chafing at the delay in the construction of that section of the Riverside County driveway leading from Beaumont to the Palo Verde and Imperial Valleys, and realizing that unless work is soon begun there will be no automobile traffic over the Yuma-to-Los Angeles branch of the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway during the Exposition year of 1915, twenty-two of the business men of the city of Beaumont motored to Riverside to inquire of the Highway Commission as to the reasons for the delay.

Under the bond issue voted for and carried in November, 1913, a section of the road was to be built from Beaumont, west through the Moreno Hills to connect Box Springs with the road to Riverside from Perris. Another section was authorized between Beaumont and Banning, and a third and most important and longest of all was to be constructed from Banning east to the Imperial County line between Mecca and Brawley, with a connecting link running out of Mecca to the Palo Verde Valley.

Sundry surveys had been made, but no actual construction work done on each of these routes, and the people of Beaumont sought to ascertain why nothing had been done, and the prospects of speedy completion of this most important link in the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway. This feeling was intensified by the fact that certain sections of the system leading to the county seat were being built which were feeders of the main highway, while the main line running through the San Gorgonio Pass and bisecting the county east and west was left undone, it was declared.

The Beaumont party visited the district attorney to ascertain what action had been taken to acquire title to the several rights of way for which deeds had not been obtained, and to insist that the condemnation suits which had been started be prosecuted with despatch. The district attorney assured the committee that he would push his end of the work as expeditiously as he could. In evidence, he stated that suit had been brought against the owners of two tracts of land between Beaumont and Banning, and that they would be tried at the first available opportunity.