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FIRST COUXTY PARK SYSTEM 



ments and the constantly recurring reports and insinna- 

 tions against the counsel demanded attention. That 

 the traction people were much encouraged by the 

 "Orange conference" was indicated by the formal ap- 

 plication directly afterward, on January 19, 1898, of the 

 Consolidated Traction Company to the Board of Freehold- 

 ers for a franchise and permission to locate tracks on Park 

 avenue and on Central avenue through Orange and East 

 Orange, and b}^ a statement from Manager David Young 

 before the Ampere Improvement Association of Newark on 

 February 10 following. 



A NEV7 APPLICATION". 



After then explaining how "we came here, trying to get 

 Central avenue, but the people kicked us out, and wouldn't 

 have anything to do with us, but we are coming again some 

 of these days,^^ Mr. Young made this prognosticating state- 

 ment : "The way in which residents in this beautiful town- 

 ship are to reach their homes is to have the trolley on the 

 avenues, Park and Central, and then get off at the cross 

 streets and go to their homes. You cannot have a park- 

 way on a one hundred-foot roadway. It is out of all 

 reason, never has been done, and never will be." 



\^nien it is remembered that it was on March 15, 1897, 

 less than eleven months previous, that the East Orange 

 authorities had, in response to the emphatic mandate of 

 public opinion, and without a dissenting vote, passed the 

 parkway ordinance and rejected the Consolidated Traction 

 Company's application, and that these statements were 

 made within thirty days after the parkways conference in 

 Orange, and the new application for the avenues above men- 

 tioned, the coincidence was indeed significant. 



Whatever may have been the intention of the Park 

 Board's counsel and the opposition to the parkways, or, 

 perhaps, more correctly speaking, the forces working for the 

 trolley interests, the practical result of befuddling the whole 

 question, was, apparently to those favoring that course, 

 most gratifying. Some of the members of the Orange 



