NATIONAL HIGHWAYS ASSOCIATION
GENERAL COLEMAN DU PONT, Chairman Board ok National Councillors CHARLES HENRY DAVIS, C.E.,	President
FREDERIC REMSEN HUTTON, M.E., Sc.D.,	General Secretary
PRESS BULLETIN
No. 39.	National	Headquarters,	New York City	March	3,	1917
WESTGARD-HOCHSTETTER "KNOW AMERICA" EXPEDITION Making Pathe-Combitone motion pictures of the United States, under the auspices and with the cooperation of the Department of the Interior and the National Highways Association. Pictures released exclusively on the Pathe program. Transportation furnished by the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company.
No Women Allowed!
A. L. Westgard finds American L'Hassa in Santa Barbara.
Already awaiting with curiosity the first Pathe release of the beautiful Pathe-Combitone scenic films made by the Westgard-Hochstetter "Know America" Expedition, American women now have an additional reason for interest in the pictures made in Santa Barbara0 This reel will show, for the first time, the one spot in America where no woman has ever set her foot or feasted her eyes, the Sacred Garden of the Santa Barbara mission.
Surrounded by high adobe walls, containing every known tropical plant, and at least one unknown to naturalists, all blessed by the monks and tended with loving care, the Sacred Garden is held inviolate from all feminine eyes except those of a reigning queen or the wife of the President of the United States. So far, no queen or First Lady of the Land has taken advantage of their chance to see this guarded spoto
In the belfry of the mission is a small slit, through which a small portion of this garden may be glimpsed with difficultyo Many women climb to the belfry to look, apparently because they are forbidden to see the Sacred Garden in any other way. Now that Mr. Westgard has succeeded in invading its blessed precincts with a motion picture camera, the entire world, feminine as well as masculine, may see the beauties of this strange collection of tropical verdure, in spite of the monkish prohibition which surrounds it. As the finished films are made by the Combitone process, the remarkable discovery of E. Wo Hochstetter by which from eight to ten color tone gradations are obtained, the illusion of reality is practically perfecto
Almost a Tragedy.
Ascending Mount Lowe near Pasadena, California, 6100 feet high, Julius Eo Timer, general manager of the Combitone Pictures Corporation, all but lost his life0 A platform was built to the front and side of the tram car ascending the mountain, projecting sufficiently far from its side to enable pictures to be taken over the edges of the precipices along which the track runs0
Forty-eight hundred feet up, and with a twenty-four hundred foot sheer drop to the rocky bed of Rubio Canyon below, one of the wires holding the camera broke. The additional strain broke other wires, the tram car came to a stop at the exclamations of the camera man, the camera toppled, the operator'grabbed, lost his balance and fell. Mr« Timer, the nearest to the camera man, grabbed with both hands and lost his balance» Both looked down the half mile of fall with nothing between them and eternity but a prayer, when the motorman, six feet of bone and muscle, caught Mr. Timer's ankle and pulled the two back to safety.
For publicity purposes it would have been well had Mr. Timer remembered to make some startling remark upon being thus happily saved.
What he really said was "Great Scott!" What the camera man said is unprintable.
Accidents Expected.
But incidents and accidents are expected on the expedition. Mr0 ! Westgard, who. has toured thousands of miles, knows that no automobile expedition which intends to go in every state in the Union and make pictures of its scenery, its industries, its activities, can hope to get through without adventures. "You mustn't mind a little thing like that" he told Mr«. Timer and the camera man, "if you'd only fallen and saved the camera at the cost of a broken bone or so, you'd have given us areal story!"
But the pictures are real pictures, and in all the glory of color of the Hochstetter process, and with the resources of the Pathe distribution service, will fill an educational need so far unsatisfied. It is because of their unusual character and magnificent possibilities that they are being made under the auspices and with the cooperation of the Department of the Interior of the Federal Government and the National Highways Association of which organization Mr. Westgard is Director of Transcontinental Highways and a Vice-President