A Wooden Boulevard Over the Desert 



Building a board road across the shifting sands of a west- 

 em desert to provide a thoroughfare for the automobile 



WHATEVER may be the mystical 

 charm of a desert, with its great 

 golden stretches, its silences and mir- 

 ages, it certainly is not conducive to "big 

 business" except to writers of romance and 

 to camel-breeders. In the United States a 

 desert is simply a bad place on the route 

 that must be traversed, and as such places 

 mean inconvenience and delay, they would 

 have to be covered with something having a 

 more valuable glitter than sand to have 

 any hold on popular regard. 



Between the imperial irrigation dis- 

 trict and Yuma, Arizona, the sand is 

 so fine and dry that when a handful is 



Above: The kind of 

 truck used to haul 

 the track sections 

 from the lumber yards 

 to their destination 



picked up, it 

 trickles out of 

 the closed fist 

 like the grains 

 in an hour glass. 

 Imagine, then, 

 the difhculty of 

 traveling over this country in a 

 heavy vehicle, and especially in 

 an automobile. But the signifi- 

 cant fact is that the state high- 

 way runs through fifty miles of 

 such sand. 



Until the California Highway 

 Commission found a way to com- 

 bat the sand, it was risky for an 

 automobile to travel over this dan- 

 gerous route. Six miles of portable 



plank roadway have now been constructed 

 through the worst sections of this desert. 

 This roadway, eight feet wide, with double- 

 width turnouts every one thousand feet, 

 consists of four-inch planks solidly spiked 

 to stringers underneath, steel strips one 

 and one-half inches wide by one-fourth inch 

 thick, one-half inch carriage bolts, and nuts 

 and washers to unite the stringers. 



An overhead tramway was utilized to 

 handle the lumber to build the roadway. 

 Several hundred feet of trolley with triplex 

 chain blocks were provided to pick up the 

 completed units, built on three construc- 

 tion tables in the lumber yard, and later 



to load them on 

 the wagons for 

 hauling to the 

 work. Ten-horse 

 teams were often 

 used. Each load 

 contained nine 

 units, and the 

 average haul was 

 seven miles. 



The venture has 

 proved a complete 

 success. 



A light plank road 

 was previously used, 

 but as the sand was 

 constantly shifting 

 such a road was al- 

 most as dangerous 

 as none at all. It was 

 soon seen that if 

 automobiles were to 

 be used the roadway 

 must be stabilized 



The venture has turned out successfully. Heavy loads 

 drawn by any number of teams, as well as automo- 

 biles may now cross the desert with comparative ease 



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