Weekly journal-miner., 1919-06-11
(BY SHARLOT M. HALL)
Roads-And How They Make Us
 What We Are.


 room drinking orange lemonade and talking of the good roads movement and what it meant to all of us, especi- ! ally to Us country people.
 The loads oi green apples overhead and the orange peel in the glasses re- minded them oi how the first oranges came to Prescott. The main travelled road to Prescott in those days was a Lack trail that swung up over the mountains from Wickenburg Cor iwhere Wickenburg was going to be when it got started). and enterprising traders bought goods along the MeNi- can line and packed them in on mules with big wooden pack saddles and gay cloth covers like the mule trains of Spain before Columbus.
 Some lucky trader got hold of a cargo of the little sweet oranges from Ulermosillo and packed them over the divide along with few stone iuas of kerosene contraband from Fort Yuma and as valuable then in Prescott as a mule load of bootleg would be now
 The pack slipped on the way and the mule buckcd down a ridge, un- corking a jug and sloshing kerosene generously over the fruit. A little thing like that didn't bother the trad CT. he wiped off the oil and sold the .oranpes to a miner who had struck a pay-streak placering along Granite creek for a handful of gold dust While the trade was going on a bunch of little girls. a small bunch, but all tncre were in Prescott at the time, watched the dickering with eager eyes. They knew apples-dried and made into pies-but oranges came out of Prescotts Conquest of Mexico, about which the handsome young governor sometimes told them stories or out of place called "Inside,' y which was marked California on the mao and had more gold than all the Rich Hill diggings.
 Small mouths watcred for the strange fruit which was rarer than gold nuggets. The miner was kind v fellow who often bought them canned sardincs and other treats, and soon they were scooting back to their pine tree playhouse each holding tightly to a yellow fruit. They ate in haste-tnen more slowly but brave lv-skin and all. and decided that apples dried and in pies, were lots nicer.
 One of them told me about it when she was an elderly lady and said it vas years before she tasted another orange and found out that kerosene was not part of the natural flavor. That was after several wagon roads had come to Prescott and mule train in the streets meant only wood or ore. from some mine, not new things to eat.
 To one who knows the history of the first roads it is interesting to see how the development of certain re- e.ons was hurried forward or held back for years by the character of the roads. bad or good, which let into them.
 Luck and Adventure may break the trails through forest and wilderness but Prosperity travels only over good roads Farm house or country trad ing store beside some natural highwa' have grown into great cities-wnile the accident of a broken wagon in the remote mountains gave us the south ern mountaineers for whom life has rtood still for a hundred years.
 Here in Yavapai there has always been a feeling for the best roads pos ,i5lc, and year by year new roads reach out into hitherto little known areas. openini them for more pros porous mining and farming. These smaller roads are of keenest interest to country people and it should be possible 10 work out some plan of CO., operation by which a reasonable care might be given them under the di rcction of competent engineers using srch local labor as would be avail able from communities along the way.
 In parts of the Middle West and some Pacific Coast states working ,ut the road tax" is almost as much | fun as Frontier Days in Prescott. Everybody turns out with teams and .cols and stretches of local road are put in good shape by the people who | use them most and know the incon- ycnicnce of having them out of order.
 MI over Yavapai bits of road that i are locally of great importance could . be kept in good shape the year round vith just a little such work done by III the neighbors, encouraged by a little county aid and direction. A Relic of Early Days Which Should
 Be In Prescott.
 Soon we shall all be gathering in he plaza around the handsome new court house for Fourth of July ora liens. and there Is a small but inter esting relic of early days that should nave a place in the plaza grounds and De permanently safe-guarded. This, pr these rather. are the millstones lscd in the first grain mill in Yavapai
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