THROUGH THE STATES

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

THROUGH THE STATES

THE ARIZONA DESERT

(By Monte Barak, M.A., Ph.D., No. IV.) After three comfortable days at the canyon (it was beautifully cool and dry on that high plateau) we started on the worst part of our trans-contin-ental journey, crossing the Arizona Desert. The first stage, William to Needles ■on the Colorado, took us through some magnificent gold-mining country, mountainous and rugged with long arid valleys flanked by huge masses of rock. Apart from the gold, this country has little to commend it; nothing but mesquite could grow in its rocky soil. And every few miles we came upon little groups of disused and dilapidated tin shacks which had obviously once been thriving gold-mining towns, but which had been abandoned when the fickle ore had petered out. At Oatman, which is right in the heart of the gold country, there is a rich deposit and we found a flourishing town looking much as it must have done in the gold-rush days, with one long wide untidy street flanked by buildings only one degree more permanent in appearance than those of a deserted town some 20 miles further east.

Apart from the neighbourhood of the occasional small streams all of this country was arid rocky desert. The transformation when we ran out of the mountains into the Colorado river valley was almost incredible. The river could be seen for miles winding through a sinuous belt of vivid green which ended abruptly where the desert began some few hundred yards from the river’s edge. It was striking evidence of how fertile the desert soil really is and how a little water could transform it irito the greenest luxuriance.

We stopped that night at Needles, an oil and mining town ’built almost at the water’s edge. Its altitude is about sea-level, its temperature was about 102 all night, and its humidity and variety of insect life would have done justice to the most equatorial part of the tropics. So our resolution to cross the Mohave Desert, from Needles to Barston, before the sun could make things, really unpleasant (as we had been told it could on the Mohave Desert) was doubly assured. We left in-sect-infested Needles at 5 a.m. and by 10 o’clock had covered the worst part of the desert. As luck would have it, too, the sky was overcast and a slight breeze blew down from the north, so the terrors of the desert passed unnoticed. Compared with Arizona and New Mexi•co this was real desert, vast stretches of undulating sand with only an occasional tuft of black mesquite or cactus. And in th© hazy distance to the north, east and south could be seen the giant masses of the mountains that shut off the tempering winds and freshening waters of the Colorado. :Shortly after Barston we began to climb through a pass in the Eastern spur of the high Sierras. It was a refreshing sight to see again, the verdant green of the western slopes and to feel the cool breeze blowing in from the coast. From San Bernadino we ran rapidly down toward th." fertile coastal plain) the foliage getting more and more luxurious and vivid in colour. Gradually we came into endless orchards of orange trees. Here and there we passed magnificent plantations of imported Australian eucalyptus and gum trees. Palm trees lined the roads—-then the outlying suburbs of Pasadena, Alhambra, etc., almost unending and finally into the heart of Los Angeles itself.

We could give Los Angeles only four days of our valuable time, and in consequence made a very sketchy survey of its many points of interest. ’' It is one of the most remarkable examples of rapid American development, having during the last 10 or 12 years grown from a relatively unimportant town to a city of over 1,250,000. It covers an area proudly referred to by Southern Californians as the “largest in the world,” and is terminated by the welldefined boundaries of what were once the towns of Pasadena, Alhambra, Glendale and Hollywood, which are now merely boroughs of the city. In the course of this growth it also spread itself over a large area of what was rather unproductive oil land, and it is quite an extraordinary' sight to see oil-wells still working near what has now become a fashionable public beach, or in a busy, suburban, business district. This rapid growth is reflected in other aspects; business, I was told, is extremely “brisk” in Los Angeles; they are tremendously proud of. their . skyscrapers, which give the city quite a structural resemblance to New York; more so, in fact, than any other city I have seen in America. The almost unbelievable thing about Southern California is that until the Colorado River was extensively used for irrigation most of this region was almost unfit for human habitation. Now the whole plain is luxuriant, with semi-tropical and sub-temperate growth. And aren’t the Southern Californians proud of their city! San Francisco they consider to be quite slow and backward. Los Angeles, on the other hand, has the laigest city area in the world, the longest street ‘in the world.” As a matter of fact, by this time we had become a little sceptical of superlatives. We passed through so many cities that were supposed to have the longest street in the world that we began to despair of ever being able to find a short street again. Humphrey and Spooner had a good story about some town in the Middle West that advertised itself as being “the largest city of its size in the world.” I can’t vouch for the statement, though it makes a good story. Certainly some of the residences in Pasadena must be the finest in the world. I’ve forgotten the price one must pay for a foot of frontage on Oraime Grove -Ave., Pasadena, but it would be difficult even to lease a house there, unless one were as wealthy as all the New York potentates who have filled Pasadena with luxurious summer palaces. That, I suppose, is why there is so much money in Los Angeles. And, of course, Aimee MadPherson and the Hollywood people keep Los Angeles very much in the public eye. We didn’t have the good fortune to meet Aimee MacPherson, but Emeleus knew a lady who c-ave us introductions to the Metrb-'Goldwyn-Mayer and Fox sttfdios, at both of which we saw “talkies” being produced —“Jenny Lind” at' Metro, and a futuristic picture, ‘‘Just Imagine,” at Fox. The new technique for sound recording has caused a tremendous upheaval and expense. All the sets have to be thoroughly sound-proof and are lagged with felt. Also, since it is now necessary to have absolute silence during the* filming and recording, a producer’s lot is not a happy one.