The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1915-06-08
HOW OCALA WILL LOOK
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS HENCE
Continued from Yesterday

Well / remembered the country be-
tween Dunnellon and Ocala, and if l
had gone over it in an aeroplane
twenty-five years before, / would
have seen ten square miles of arid
wilderness to one of cultivation. Over
most of it nothing had ever f1ourished
but pines and palmettoes, of the first
of these most had been cut down,
leaving only stumps.
There was far different scene I'M
rolled beneath US as we winged our
way home that early summer morn
ing. AS we circled above the phos-
phate city, the eastern horizon blush
ed and the stars began to pale. / took
note that the shanties that made up
two-thirds of Dunnellon when / saw
it last were gone and that it was a
handsome town as well as a big one.
1t and Rockwell were welded to-
gether, and along the banks of Blue
Springs run were many fine looking
looking enough to honor the Italian
princess who was her namesake.
And now the sun looked over the rim
of the world, and as he shot his fam
ing chances toward us / looked down
for my first chance to really see the
land.
Many of US have looked from noun
tain tops and seen country fifty
miles away. But if you go up fifteen
hundred feet in an aeroplane over a
level country, you won't know how
far you can see. Things a mile away
are right under you.
Florida had come into her own. In
dustry and science had changed the
country to garden. Field and grove,
orchard and pasture, as far as the
eye could reach. Homes studded the
landscape. Neat villages were fire.
quent, bigger towns occasional. Fiji
teen miles away, Ocala's skyscrapers
stood up like mountains between us
and the sun.
The nce-all-pervading pines were
gone. Here and there in a few places,
generally in pastures, could be seen a
clump of the trees that were univer-
sal few years before. But there was
no lack of foliage. The orange groves
and peach orchards, and whole for
ests of pecans, oaks, poplars and syca-
mores set for shade took the place of
the pines.
Two things caught my eye at once
One was that the houses had no CHM
neys.- The other was that except
around the pastures there were no
fences.
But the chief interest was the city.
l thought of the ancient lie that
some Damascus real estate booster
attributed to Mohammed, saying that
he refused to enter the town, lest he
should want to stay there, and so
lose Paradise. He might have said it
of Ocala and been believed.
l had no conception of a city with
out smoke. 1t was one of the elements
AN infallible sign of industry. If /
had stepped across mountain brow
and seen in the valley a city without
volumes of vapor pouring from its
chimneys, it would have seemed un-
canny; 1 would have thought it was
dead.
But here, as clean and bright, as an
ocean-washed shell newly cast up by
the tide on the beach, lay a city
smokeless, but very much alive.
& r7oip,4fo xrva 1ooI-oJ Io,-v,. Al. -
quiet streets, tenanted with only the
scant night traffic. The next minute
they were thronged with people out
to do their work in the best part of
the day.
Everything was fresh and cool. The
high buildings of the business center,
untainted with smoke or dust, gleam-
ed brightly, but everywhere around it
the homes were ringed and set with
trees and gardens and flowers.
The houses were all high, five and
six stories the rule, but there were
wide spaces between, the streets were
wide, the parks and squares were
frequent, trees and fowerbeds border
ed the sidewalks, and vegetable gar
dens stood beside and behind the
houses. 1t looked like people had
learned to live.
Everywhere everything looked
fresh and cool and clean as though it
was newly washed by the rain. And
the high cultivation of the country
around bespoke large and unfailing
supply of water.
Said I to the aviator: "From whence
do you draw all this water. 1t looks
to me like you would keep Silver
Springs pumped dry all the time
Eve would if we depended on it en-
tirely. We draw from it only our
drinking water and pressure for our
high buildings in case of fire. We
hardly avaT have a ro bIlt wa cv11ard