Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway

by Effie Price Gladding

It was an easy drive from Corona to Riverside, which we reached in the late afternoon in time for a sunset drive up and around the corkscrew road leading to the top of Mt. Rubidoux. No one should miss the view from the top of Rubidoux Mountain. While its summit is not at a great height, yet the mountain is so isolated and the whole surrounding country is so level a valley that the view is very extensive. One looks down upon the town of Riverside, with its pleasant homes and church steeples; and upon miles of lemon and orange orchards groomed to the last degree of fertility and perfection. It is an immense garden. Orchards, towns, grassy spaces with a silver river winding through them, all give one that sense, ever present in California, of happiness, of genial climate, of unfailing beauty of surrounding.

At Riverside one stays of course, even if but for a night, at the famous Mission Inn, known as the Glenwood. Here is the creation of a man who has brought together in unique and pleasing combination the features of an inn, of a great curio shop, of a cathedral, of a happy lounging place. You may study for hours antique pieces of furniture; old tapestries, old bells, old bits of stained glass. You may spend an evening in the great music hall with its cathedral seats and listen to the organ played by a finished and yet popular artist. You may lounge in an easy chair on a cloistered porch. All these and many other things you may do at the wonderful Mission Inn. But the open road called us and we had time for only one night in Riverside. We drove from Riverside to Redlands, a particularly charming town. It has a better situation than Riverside, being on a slope instead of upon a level plain. It has beautiful streets and hosts of lovely winter homes of most attractive architecture. The drive up to Smiley Heights, where one runs through exquisite gardens along a narrow ridge, looking down upon a green cultivated valley on the one side, and a polished winter city on the other side, is a delightful experience.

From Redlands we drove on to San Bernardino and thence to Pomona and Claremont. The San Bernardino Valley has miles of grapes, the vineyards being on an immense scale. In California the grapes are not trained upon arbors. The stalks are kept low, and in looking over a vineyard one sees long rows of low growing, stocky vines, and masses of green foliage. In San Bernardino they have a fashion of planting windbreaks of evergreens around their gardens and smaller vineyards; but there are also immense stretches of open country planted with vines. One vineyard of three thousand acres has a sign announcing that it is the largest vineyard in the world. Pomona and Claremont are pleasant towns, Pomona being the seat of a college. From Claremont we drove on to Pasadena. There are lovely drives about Pasadena, and one should not neglect to go up along the foothills and from that point of vantage look down upon the town spread out on the slopes below. There is now a motor drive up Mt. Wilson, from which one has extremely grand views, but the Mt. Wilson drive is to be recommended only to people with small, light machines which have a short turning base. The mountain road is by no means the equal of the roads one finds in the Alps. It is too narrow and too hazardous for any but small machines. For most tourists the nine miles of the Mt. Wilson road would better be traversed on donkey-back. For those who love to climb, the winding road is a delightful walk with views of changing grandeur. The hotel at the top is a very pleasant place to stay, and one may have there the glories of the sunset and the sunrise.

The most lovely avenue in Pasadena, up and down which one should drive several times, is Orange Grove Avenue. Along the street the feathery pepper tree and the palm alternate. The strikingly handsome electric lamp standards are of bronze. Open lawns are characteristic settings for the beautiful houses which line the avenue. There are many houses of white or yellow stucco, some of them set off by delicate iron balconies. Leaving the finished beauty of Orange Avenue we drove over a great canyon across which is flung a very ornamental bridge. The canyon has been turned into a park, and fine houses stand on its banks, commanding from their heights wonderful views.

We came on through Burbank and once more into the San Fernando Valley, just being opened up. Here and there were tiny houses and sometimes tents, the first shelters of settlers who were cultivating their newly acquired patches of land. We saw people cleaning and plowing their land. Off to the right were beautiful mountains with houses and ranches nestled in the foothills. We drove through the new town of San Fernando and over the fine highway of the Newhall grade, passing through a tunnel and going on to Saugus by a splendid road running all the way from Pasadena. Just after leaving San Fernando we came through Sylmar, where a big sign told us that we were passing "the largest olive orchard in the world." This is the property of the Los Angeles Olive Growers' Association. We drove for more than a mile past the ranks of grey-green trees which stretched away back to the foothills.

From Saugus we turned toward Mint Canyon. We were now about to cross the great backbone of California, running north and south and dividing the valleys of the coast from the valleys of the interior. We could have crossed by the Tehachapi Pass, but preferred for this time to drive through Mint Canyon and over the Tejon Pass. All along the Canyon we saw little homesteads planted in pocket valleys. Here and there were green spots; orchards newly set out, patches of grain beginning to grow. Little wooden shacks showed where the homesteaders had first sheltered their household goods. The settlers themselves were working in their fields and orchards. There were long stretches, too, of rough country where tall yuccas, sometimes ten feet high, were blooming. At Palmdale we came out into a great plain, the mountains in the distance. A high wind was blowing, filling our eyes with dust. Somewhere on the plain the searching wind whipped my lightweight motor coat out of the tonneau where I had stowed it and I saw it no more. It was literally blown out of sight and knowledge. We had seen all along advertisements of "Palmdale Acres," and we now came to the little town itself, a tiny settlement with flamboyant signs advertising its high hopes. We read, "Keep your eye on Palmdale, 10,000 people in 1925." Close to the sign was the irrigation ditch with a thick stream of water rushing through. We realized that all the hopes of Palmdale and all the possibilities of future population were centered in that stream, which was to carry life and fertility to the great dusty plains before us.

We had taken luncheon at Acton, a sordid little place with an extremely unattractive wooden hotel, poor and bare. The luncheon, cooked and served by a hard working landlady, had been better than appearances promised. We had had hot beefsteak, a good boiled potato, some crisp lettuce, and fair tea. Western people are addicted to green tea, a great affliction to one accustomed to black tea. Western hotel keepers would do well to use black tea for their tourists, as the use of green tea is, so far as I know, almost unknown in the East.

Our road was rising now and we were approaching Neenach. We were driving along the foothills on the high side of another great valley. As we came near Neenach we passed an orchard to our right, the trees loaded with beautiful, velvety green almonds. To the left was another orchard, filled with neglected, dying almond trees. We had not known whether we would find at Neenach a little town or a corner grocery store. It turned out to be simply a post office in the home of a young settler who with his wife was just making his start at ranching. He was a delightful young fellow with shining white teeth, clear eyes, and an enthusiasm that was pleasant to see. A big St. Bernard dog protected his wife, who looked very picturesque in her riding costume. Although the ranchman had been brought up in a city, he had come out to these foothills, bought one hundred and sixty acres at $17.50 an acre, driven his well forty feet, got his water, and planted his cottonwood trees for his first shade. He was soon to plant his orchard and start his garden. He told us that he would have plenty of water, as the mountains on whose foot-slopes the farm lay were nine miles deep and fifteen miles long. I asked him about the orchards which we had just passed, so fruitful on the right, so sad and neglected on the left. He said that the almond orchards on the left had been planted years ago by a little colony of people who had three bad years following their planting. They became discouraged and moved away, abandoning their orchards and houses. The orchards which we had seen full of fruit were of a later planting.

We asked why it was that the great spaces of Antelope Valley which stretched below the hills and off to the mountains beyond had not been taken by settlers. Our young ranchman explained that the valley which looked to be about eight miles across was really thirty miles wide, and that it was too far from water for people to settle there. I looked over the immense stretches of the valley and at the masses of tall, spiky tree-yuccas, and wished that some way might be found to irrigate those thousands of acres. If some modern Moses could strike water from a rock, which would flow through Antelope Valley, our young settler would someday look down upon hundreds of houses and white tents instead of upon lonely forests of yucca.

We drove on from Neenach to the top of the grade, some 4230 feet. Huge round-shouldered hills, bare and lonely, rose on each side of us. Coming to the Lebec ranch house, we asked shelter for the night. These ranch houses are very hospitable and are willing to take the place of a hotel so far as they are able. We found the head of the house in some confusion and anxiety. His cook had left that morning and the settlement school ma'am had offered to help with the cooking in the emergency. One of the ranchmen volunteered to make the bed in our sleeping room, although he confessed that he had never made a bed in all his life before. We ate our supper with the ranchmen, sitting at an oil-cloth-covered table. We had hunks of cold meat, noodle soup with very thick, hearty noodles, stewed dried peaches, sliced onions, stewed tomatoes, and good bread and coffee. After a talk before a blazing open fire with two young electric engineers who, like ourselves, had sought shelter for the night, we had a dreamless night's slumber.