(C) The Dearborn "Independent" Switchback, Mill Creek Road, running from Los Angeles to Mount San Gorgonio An Alpine Park for Southern California? T HOSE who have experienced the good fortune of visiting the San Bernardino National Forest, east of Los Angeles, will recall the maestic grandeur of the lofty peaks of the San Bernardino Range, which lie in a outheasterly direction from the forest proper. At the extreme western end of he range lies one of the highest peaks in outhern California, Mount San Gorgoio. This bleak and barren peak towers 1,464 feet above sea-level, dwarfing the companions about it. Against this alpine giant an occasional cloud wave breaks, linging to the white pinnacles or droping down the valleys on the other side f the mountain. On beyond to the southeast lies an stonishing array of huge lavender-gray mountain peaks, streaked and splashed with dazzling snow, thrust into the clear lue of the California sky. The visitor tands entranced with the scenery. There are beautiful streams tumbling lown from the snow-capped peaks, windng their way under huge snowdrifts and through picturesque alpine lakes of icecold water. You will find no softening shadows under the warm noonday sun, no diffusing veils of haze to press the great peaks back into the distance, as you will find in the sister ranges of northern Washington and Oregon. There they stand, San Bernardino piercing the sky at 11,600 feet and Mount Jepson but a trifle less lofty. Clean-cut in the peculiarly clear atmosphere of this section, brilliant, startling in their apparent proximity, they seem to encircle the traveler on all sides. A movement is on foot to convert this wonder region into a National monument, thus forever preserving it for the public, to be known as the Junipero Serra National Monument. In order to acquaint public-spirited men and women with exactly what this beautiful mountain country possesses a complete survey of the entire district has been made. Innumerable good roads lead to within easy hiking distance of San Gorgonio, and each year more motorists will be making the trips to these unfrequented beauty spots. It is only a question of time until auto roads with easy grades will be established to bring the automobile almost to the top of the lofty peaks in this range. This proposed National monument will embrace 7,000 acres of practically virgin mountain country, the like of which is found nowhere else in southern California. All along the range are numerous points that tower in excess of 10,000 feet above sea-level. Viewed from the south and north, this ridge appears as a massive wall, with San Gorgonio, barren and rocky, a landmark that can be descried for hundreds of miles away. The landscape is a white expanse at the foot of these lofty peaks. The mountains seem to reveal something of their structure in lines of white and brown. The trees are absolutely motionless, each carrying its veil of fleecy ermine. The forest vistas of the foothill country here seem to invite the explorer into their cool recesses. The rivers and lakes, which are ditions. From these snow banks and deposits run small rivulets, filling natural depressions, forming lakes and streams, from which other larger streams flow down into the fertile valleys alongside the Southern Pacific Railroad to irrigate the orchards and fields. On one of our trips our party drove into Camp Radford, where the city of Los Angeles maintains a playground camp. From there we drove over the Barton Flats and Horse Meadows to the take-off for the hiking district in the little-known lake regions. In this district is the Valley of a Thousand Springs, so named by the Western Rangers because of the countless springs they discovered there on one of their organized outings. Here are many little glacial lakes. One in particular, Dry Lake, is located just beneath the summit of San Gorgonio. This is an entrancing piece of water when viewed on a still day with the snowy pinnacles of San Gorgonio reflected in its quiet waters. Dollar Lake is a small pond located in an obscure spot seldom visited by the casual traveler. The lowest lake in this section is Jinks Lake. It is noteworthy that the forest surrounding this lake is different from any other in this region. It consists largely of yellow and sugar pine, with some white fir. This is all virgin timber, and the trees of these species reach a larger size than in any other part of southern California, extending down to Barton Flats. If you, tent near, water deer are likely to wander into your camp. The higher altitudes were once the habitat of the Rocky Mountain sheep, which has long since become extinct in this region. Part of the plans of the Western Rangers is to bring back to these barren slopes the vanished sheep. Should you desire to reach this proposed park by auto, it is best that you Enter either through Forest Home or by way of Barton Flat. Eventually another Foad could be built up from the San Gorgonio Pass and Moreno Valley side. Through the efforts of certain members of the Western Rangers the movement to nake this into a National monument has een brought to the attention of the President and the Department of the Inerior. Every civic organization in outhern California has worked hard to ring this about in co-operation with the Western Rangers. Such well-known men is Dr. David Starr Jordan, Walter F. Dexter, President of Whittier College, Dr. E. C. Moore, University of Califoria, and Mr. Mark Keppel are all taking n active interest in this movement, and ve who have seen and enjoyed this reion can only hope to see their efforts in ora 66 Alpine lakes of ice-cold water." An unusual glimpse of Mount San Gorgonio Boom! Boom! Boom! NOR the first time in my life I am sitting right in the middle of a real estate boom, where a big wad of unearned increment is liable to come hurtling along any minute and make me a wealthy and respected citizen, and it certainly does feel funny. I am like a man sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm with Jove trying to use up a trainload of brand-new thunderbolts in ten minutes and the lightning hitting everything in the neighborhood and liable to hit me next. At the latest announcement the boom had hit the property on the other side of the street I live on, and was sitting with its feet in the gutter trying to decide whether to come across the street or go somewhere else and give me only a raucous laugh. By ELLIS PARKER BUTLER oozing away, but my home town never boomed. My knowledge of booms was entirely academic, and here I am now in the very middle of one, and I hardly It is a strange feeling that agitates the know how to act. At the present moman who has been trembling for sixteen ment I am sitting quietly with my face years for fear he will lose the dear old turned toward the boom, not making place through foreclosure of the mort- faces at it, but willing to have it sock gage when, all of a sudden, he begins to me in the eye if it feels so inclined. I be afraid that some one will offer him so am trying to make my countenance indimuch money for the place that to refuse cate that it will be a cruel moment when it would mark him as a candidate for the I have to part with the place where I insane asylum. have spent so many happy years and All my life I have lived where the hot, where my twins and son were born, but not seven million miles from Flushingwhere my boom is now booming-who declined to lend a widow money to buy a piece of property because they felt that it was their duty to protect her against her own folly. Her realtor declined to sell her the property because he did not want her.to ruin herself so soon after her husband's death. The other day that foolish woman, who went ahead and bought the property anyway, cleaned up a hundred thousand dollars or so on it. An institution that was co-heir in certain pieces of real estate a few years ago insisted that the estate be settled so that it could cash in on its portion. It practically told the concern renting its part of the property that it could buy or get out. The concern bought for about $60,000; it was offered $275,000 yesterday for this piece it was forced to buy. Our boom here in the Borough of Queens, and in Flushing in particular, came in the night, like all booms. The truth is that booms are almost never home-grown. Almost invariably it is the outsider who makes the boom. It is the native son who is surprised. coppery odor of expanding and bursting in my heart I know that if I am offered A booms has drifted into my nostrils, but this is the first time a full-blown boom has sat down on my front porch and snorted like big money. In my youth I lived where the gasping of the great Kansas City boom was constantly in my ears as it swelled like a balloon tire and then gently squashed as the air went out of it, and I saw the covered wagons go through our little Iowa town labeled "Kansas or Bust" and come back labeled "Kansas and Busted." I swelled with pride as I read that Des Moines had now so nobly enlarged her city limits that she was-in territory-the largest city in the world, practically overlapping Omaha, Nebraska, on one side and crowding Philadelphia on the other, and I heard the whoosh as that boom punctured. I worked for the man who went over to Chicago to invest in boom property there and hit the site on such a rainy day that the water was ankle deep as far as the eye could reach, so that he came home with his money in his pocket, and learned, within a year, that some man with web feet or a better idea of Chicago real estate had made a million dollars or so by buying that same square-footage of dampness. My entire young life was colored by news of booms puffing up and booms a good price I will merely ask about a is, or that the cockroach and the water- THE history of a boom is invariably the same "And he awoke the next morning and found that prices were booming." I do not believe any man was ever able to predict when a boom would begin or when it would end. The boom almost invariably catches everybody in town asleep; it arrives, as the above quotation suggests, during the night, like the circus. The people go to bed wondering if to-morrow will be a good day for painting the fence, and in the morning the place is full of realtors' tents and high prices per front foot and six-story apartment-houses with eleva tors. RO TOWN may have a Main Street. For years and years property on the! Main Street changes hands very little; now and then a building shifts from one owner to another and the front-foot value gets to be fairly well ground into. every one's knowledge. The price for a good corner may be $500 a front foot; for other property $400 a front foot. If t a corner sells for $525 a foot, it is talked about. Some one remembers when that corner could have been bought for $300 a foot. This goes on for years, and the town gets to believing that $500 a front foot is a good honest price, and plenty. There are eighteen vacant stores on Main Street. Presently a subway is projected, and some dealer in the big city near by hears this and thinks it will make the town grow; he comes out and rents a store and starts in business. Work is begun on the subway, and more wide-awake dealers come to town to get established before it is too late. Then a dealer comes who discovers there are no more vacant stores. A few weeks later the local paper prints the news that eight pieces of real estate on Main Street have changed hands recently at prices from $800 to $1,000 per front foot. It is discovered that these were bought by Wills & Minch, by Roth I know a group of bankers in a town stein, Hurder & Co., by the Rexto Realty Sat 器 To the Policy-Holders of New York Life Insurance Co. A Mutual Organization 346 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, N. Y. Incorporated Under the LIFE Insurance is not a commodity; it is service, scientific social service. Its beneficence, however, is not limited to paying death-claims. It touches society at many points and renders many services of which few people ever think. As policy-holders you are public benefactors, not merely because you have protected society by protecting your dependents, but because you are advancing human efficiency and human happiness through the beneficent activities of this Company's assets. The assets of this Company benefit both the insured and the uninsured. They reach all-even as the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. In the year 1925 the Finance Committee invested in securities that demanded discrimination and judgment $151,371,950.10, to yield on the average, 5.36% Analyze that total and you at once see how widely and directly it touches and helps the community at large. This is the picture: MUNICIPAL BONDS: A capital investment of $1,044,177.06, to yield 4.33%. REAL ESTATE MORTGAGES: During 1925 the Committee 5,151 Loans on residential property, representing a capital invest- 170 Loans on business properties, a capital investment of $32,801,- 939 Loans on farms, a capital investment of $5,843,608.26. Capital soundly invested in Mortgages on Real Estate is safe; it yields good return, and renders a genuine public service. Your investment in mortgages of over ninety-three million dollars in the year 1925 appears in the balance-sheet below as part of your total investment in mortgages amounting to $353,627,202.42. That total is divided into exactly the classifications I have made of the investments of 1925 and is all equally useful. RAILROAD BONDS: In this class of securities the Committee in 1925 made a capital investment of $21,416,375.55 to yield 4.99%, as follows: In bonds secured by mortgages on bridge and terminal properties. In equipment trust certificates secured by locomotives, freight and passenger cars. $ 1,558,365.00 ....... In bonds secured by mortgages on railroads, covering PUBLIC UTILITY BONDS: Here in 1925 the Committee In bonds secured by mortgages on gas, electric light In the balance-sheet below the activities of the Finance Committee for the year 1925 and in previous years are projected on a larger screen. After eighty-one years of business the Company's assets on December 31, 1925 (taking bonds at market value) amounted to $1,149,471,556.02. We are not here considering the strictly Life Insurance function of that accumulation, which of course is its first function. We are emphasizing the fact that every dollar of that huge sum is working every minute in the public interest, something you as policy-holders seldom think of, something the public is scarcely aware of. You insured your lives in this Company primarily to protect your old age and your dependents. You performed a good deed. Good deeds go far. They illustrate the truth of what Portia says in the "Merchant of Venice": "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." |