MOLASSES PAVEMENTS.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 3, Issue 154, 13 November 1895, Page 4

MOLASSES PAVEMENTS.

American.)

Perhaps tlio oddest pavement ever laid is one just completed at Chino, California. It is made mostly of molasses, and if it proves all of the success claimed for it, it may point a way for the sugar planters of the South to profitably dispose of the millions of gallons of useless molasses which they are said to havo on hand. The head chemist of a sugar factory at Chino. Mr E. Turke, was lead to make certain experiments, of which the now side-walk, a thousand feet long, from the factory to the mam street, is the result. The molasses used is a refuse product, hitherto believed to be of no value. It is simply mixed with a certain kind of sand to about the consistency of asphalt and laid like an asphalt pavement. The composition dries quickly and becomes quite hard and remains so. The peculiar point of it is that the sun only makes it drier and harder, instead of softening it, as might be expected. A block of the composition, two feet long, a foot wide and one inch thick, . was submitted to severe tests and stood thorn well. Laid with an inch or so of its edges resting on supports, it withstood repeated blows of a machine hammer without showing any effects of cracking or bending.