Thursday, July 3, 1930
THE LAFAYETTE TRIBUNE
Pago Seven
GREATEST T
Ford Will Spend |< $30,090,000 For | Expansion Work
Now Branch Plants And Improvements Are Planned For This Year
;w branch plants, additions other improvements to present and equipment planned £ord Motor Company this ^present an expenditure ^lly more than $30,-als of the company
st to Coast
THE LAFAYETTE TRIBUNE
An Independent Weekly Newspaper Published Every Thursday by 7HE tribune PUBLISHING CO. LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA
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Robert D. Voorbies, Jr.)
Raoul E. Mouton	)
RALPH R. BIENVENU,
,4,500,000 al-the hands ;ion proranch the
EB7TERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER APRIL 27, 1928. AT THE POST OFFICE AT LAFAYETTE, LA.. UNDER TfiE ACT OF MARCH 3, 1879.
Memberj
National Editorial Association SOUTH LOUISIANA PRESS ASS’N
THURSDAY, JULY 3, 1930
^rds of 526,0001 ces in Chevrolet retail stores at-isjwted«£sich of the five meetings, •eased selling efficiency by and the addi-
Qne Year 152.04)
Lessees and Business Mgrs.
IN THE VALLEY OF'THE I'ADRKSJ SAN DIEGp. CALIFORNIA
J.07. ~ ' -
ANCIENT SPANISH OATES.aW/;? < SAINT AUGUSTINE. FLORID,".'
America’s first complete transcontinental highway is nearly finished, leading from the old Spanish gates of the city of St. Augustine, Fla., to the old S panish Mission at San Diego, Cal. Harral Ayres, Managing Director of the Association vyhich has promoted this motor road, is shown in insert.
Orleans, La.—“Aho; well is that?” Rath ft t~guage for an oil ir 3tl "go has chgngoi ‘uojsi.v we]]s pUj ou
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i =»I1 'ind at 5 woi imqi ojjq Jv,eL
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the line of the chain of missions and presidios which the King of Spain ordered in 1772 to be constructed from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of California. San Antonio was the meeting place of all the trails connecting the Spanish settlements with each other.
And in San Antonio, a few weeks ago, the King of Spain, through the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, presented a royal decoration to Harral Ayers, the managing director of the Old Spanish Trail Association, m rec-
nition of his services «	uuuuuuce.	uneu	ic	is	iinisnea n
ing and perpetuating the	i‘ - will have cost upward of $110,-
D
•la-
ish tradition.	f
Of the first 579 mite of the Trail, from St Augu£i« £ Bay St. Louis, all but a few jn Mjss_ been paved, and that P gravel, issippi, is hard sand» to tIle
Thence across Louisw c0ncrete
Texas line, 3G- nj .. ’^)lC entire pavement is being ® be the end distance, though it	.g ;s Com-
of the year before tions are
pleted. The unpaved s
good gravel roads.	isi»na line
From the Texas-L»	thc
to San Antonio, 32* d Thence Trail is 90 per cent P» be gravel ?83 miles to El P»s°>d paving
5 J m«od but dusty ? eventu-
™heingEcarried on raP^J stretch, is being	c,lt'	rd across
ally to	vest"'	to the
From J- „ and Arif ’mile., of New Meic au 7j2 ? the rest
California
gravel roadways over the'(desert and through the Rocky Mountains.
By the end of this year it is expected that the last stretch of the 178 miles across California to the Pacific will have been paved.
This great highway, 2,741 miles long, is the largest single piece of road building which has ever been undertaken since the days when the Caesars connected all of the outlying provinces of Europe with Imperial Rome by roads, some of Ued which have lasted to this day and 0m-are still main thoroughfares of na_ commerce. When it is finished it for for-list tlfe h<fr
OLD SPANISH TRAIL FROM ST. AUGUSTINE TO SAN DIEGO JOINS PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC
By the end of 1931 it will be possible for a motorist to start from Maine and drive to San An tonio, Texas, without ever getting off a hard road. Within another two or three years the motorist can continue his Journey to California, over hard roads all the way.
With all of our progress in-road building, there is to-day not a single route across the Continent which does not involve driving over hundreds of miles of roads which nobody could classify as good and which most motorists, accustomed to the paved highways of both coasts and the Great Lakes region, would classify as positively bad. But with the completion of the Old Spanish Trail we shall have a highway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, a highway paved or hard surfaced throughout its entire length, and a transcontinental highway, moreover, which will be passable at all seasons of the year, since it is located throughout its length far to the south of the snow-belt, which makes the more northerly passages impossible in winter.
It is no wonder that the United Statos Government is aiding liberally in the construction of this road which will give the speediest possible route for the movement of motorized forces from one coast to the other.
From Maine to Florida the Atlantic Coastal Highway is now substantially completed, either concrete, tar-macadam or hard sand-clay surface all the way. And when it gets to historic old St.
Gasoline Tax is
000,000, provided by the states, counties and municipalities and by the United States Government.
As every other great road does, the Old Spanish Trail is opening up ritk new areas to settlements, to indus- vith try and to development. Until it lce was cut through from Jacksonville
west, five years ago, few tourists S7.-.	...._____  .__________
to Florida ever saw the lovely roll- discovering and spreading the news' ing country of West Florida, the to the rest of the world that in this hills and rivers and coast-line South and Southwest there are op-vistas that lie between Tallahassee portunities and beauties which few and the beautiful city of Pensa- had ever realized existed, cola. The opening of the Trail j has brought new life to Pensacola,	f
j which with its magnificent harbor and new rail connections northward is rapidly recapturing its ancient importance as a seaport.
And so, all along its route, the growing tide of motor tourists following the Old Spanish Trail is
Augustine, Florida, it strike- rhs beginning of the Old Spa : :h Trail, connecting St. Augustine on the East with San Diego on th» West.
The idea of a cross-contincn ‘ highway which would follow th/i trade and military trails blazed P -the early Spanish settlers on tl? • Gulf and in the Southwest wa i first given light at a gathering a t Mobile, Ala., in 1915. Nobod: knows who selected the picturesque and descriptive name, nov just how the movement started. The first idea was to connect Ne>v Orleans with Miami. But tlte West heard about it and eagerly joined in the movement, set up n promotion headquarters in San Antonio, and projected the original! plan two thousand miles farther than its original enthusiasts had dreamed of going.
And now it is nearing comp’ e-tion.
Starting from St. Augusti ac, where the Spaniards have left thoir indestructible record in the narrow streets and picturesque old fort and other buildings of. this olde.st of American municipalities, t.hu Old Spanish Trail runs throu gh Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensm-cola, Mobile, Bay Saint Louis, New Orleans, Lake Charles, Boa u-mont, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Stockton, El Paso, Las Cruces, Douglas, Tucson, Phoenix and so to California and San Diego. It crosses eight states, three gres.t bays and the greatest of Nortih American rivers. It crosses tho Great Divide at its lowest point, at Bisbce, Arizona, at an altitude of G,030 feet above sea-level and descends into the Imperial Valley through El Centro, California,. 51 feet below sea-level. Yet tliere are no grades which cannot he driven in high gear.
Two-thirds of the draina-ge water of the United States crosses the Old Spanish Trail, yet only two ferries are necessary; one aero ■ i the Mississippi River at New Or-ty leans, the other over Berwick Bay plat Morgan City, Louisiana. All le of the other watercourses whic h the Trail crosses have bee i 9f bridged.
re I The Old Spanish Trail foil. •
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