Arizona republican., 1910-10-23
PRACTICAL
 DREAMING  Transformation of Ethereal
 Into the Material PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE
Salt River Valley Where the Lessons of Human Experience Are Being Adapted to Useful Pur- poses at Present Day.

There is much criticism of the dreamer yet all that is was once a dream. Action if effective must be preceded by inspiration that has talk en form through imagination. Even scientific investigation, the least sen timental of all human activities, must be pursued along preconceived lines else is there lack of method and or derly progression. Peary saw the north pole twenty years before he found it. Sentiment is the handspring of all human achievement of worthy nature and dreams are the tentative working plans of the builders, giving way to rules supplanted by necessity. Sentiment is the warp reaching from the remote past into the remote fut- ture through which the. race is con- stantly weaving the wool of the pres ent, creating the fabric of things that are.
 The Salt river valley of today is the Salt river valley of the past. It has been accomplished. The reader who pauses in contemplation of its achieved prosperity can profit by it only when he thinks of it in connec- ton with a dream, the dream of the future. To learn of the present pros perity of this section avails him noth- ing, unless it inspires him to enlist in the ranks of the dreamers. He can never participate in what is, but he may become an important factor in what is to be. It is to arouse the faculties of imagination along that line that The Republican so constantly sets forth the achievements of today, for all that now is, was but so recent ly mere imagination.
 No man was more harshly criticized ten years ago that B. A. Fowler of this city, who in his minds eye saw the annual flood waters of Salt river stored in the Roosevelt reservoir, gen. tly percolating through 100000 acres of thirsty land on which the trees were dying, the vines shriveling. the vegetables dessicating. Today the re- servoir is an accomplished fact and the greater part of that barren acreage blooms with the verdure of a sub tropical climate.
 Not many years ago F. NJ. Murphy of Prescott, wearied with traversing the Bradshaw mountains in a buck board, dreamed of riding from his
 
 car. For nearly fifteen years he has reveled in a realization of that dream. But even then it was a circuitous pas sage from Phoenix to the outer world. He dreamed again and transcontinen- tai through line began to take shape and is now all but completed. One more turn of the wheel and 1t will be- come a reality, even though his dream was seized upon by others, eager to share it with him and help in its ma terialization. Years before dreamer rolled into Phoenix from. Maricopa after a dusty ride in stage coach and steel rails soon connected Phoenix with the main line.
 Col Epes Randolph came to Arizona broken in health as a division superin- tendent for the Southern Pacific. Gaz- ing on. the wonderland his mind was filled with visions that have since been constantly materializating. They are too numerous for recital here, except a single illustration. The one supreme need of this section is cheap fuel and the dream that is to connect the coal fields of southwestern Colorado with the Salt river valley, soon to be re- zion of dense population, has not only taken shape but is moving toward reality that will before the kinder gartners of today reach the high school, unite Phoenix and Denver on a direct through line of railroad.
 Eighteen months ago the people of Buckeye and Arlington, the lower ex tension of the Salt river valley, awoke to a full appreciation of their handi- cap in a forty-mile wagon haul to the markets of this city. Simultaneously the business interests of Phoenix evolved an imaginary line of railroad from Phoenix to Arlington, fifty miles long. Three months ago train service was established on the dream road, transformed into ties and steel And in its terminal is the germ of life that will certainly push forward to the Colorado river, uniting perhaps with the dream road from San Diego that is now creeping across the I'm perial valley toward Yuma.
 These lines all pass through and to markets for the products of the Salt river valley. but there are yet within the domain of the southwest other markets that can not be reached. Within the year Bisbee and Douglas have fully awakened to the need of those products grown in this valley as they can be grown nowhere else, and the summer has been spent by the magnates of the Fl Paso and South western, in picturing the day when