Transport: New Road Old

At the turn of the century in California, two men had great dreams. Last week one dream finally came true and the other was an old nightmare in which both dreams fought.

The man whose dream came true was 72-year-old Dr. John Lorenzo Dow Roberts, who settled in Monterey 40 years ago. Many of his patients lived along the rugged coastal mountains reached only by difficult trails. Riding through this virgin terrain. Dr. Roberts grew to love its scrawny cypress, bosky gorges,, tall redwoods, dreamed of a scenic highway. Last week after 20 years of battling legislative opponents and tough engineering problems, Dr. Roberts finally saw his highway opened, a 139-mi. oiled string twined around the long fingers of the coastal mountains. The road reaches from arty Carmel-by-the-Sea down to William Randolph Hearst’s huge San Simeon ranch and San Luis Obispo, opens up a whole unspoiled section to motorists.

The man whose dream became a nightmare is a far more famed Californian— nimble, thimble-sized John Downey Harvey, son of Society Leader Eleanor Martin and San Francisco’s chief dandy in the early 1900s. Like Dr. Roberts, he in his day cast his eyes shoreward, conceived a passenger railroad to link San Francisco and Santa Cruz, 80 mi. south. Downey Harvey incorporated Ocean Shore R. R. in 1905. Big sums were subscribed by prominent San Franciscans and construction soon began at both ends under great engineering difficulties. Then came the 1906 earthquake. Most of the subscribed money was never put up, real estate operators grabbed land. By 1909 at least $7,500,000 had been sunk in the project, and the management was broke. Out forever stepped little Downey Harvey. Trains ran at each end for years, but in 1920 Ocean Shore was officially abandoned, its tracks torn up.

Two years later two San Francisco capitalists, Selah Chamberlain and Harry W. Cole, decided to salvage the wreck. Legal squabbles beset the reclamation at once, the biggest coming when the State Highway District claimed the right-of-way to link it into the Carmel-San Simeon Highway. Civic clubs, chambers of commerce and the like have joined forces with the State to wrest the road from Ocean Shore R.R. Last week the battle still raged in court. Meanwhile, Downey Harvey, hav-ing lost $5,000,000 and been forced into bankruptcy, never entered business again. Convicted of fraud in 1913 for transferring $100,000 in stock to his wife before bankruptcy, Downey Harvey was cleared by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1916, has lived ever since on San Francisco’s Russian Hill in complete quiet and extreme popularity among San Franciscans with big hearts and long memories. Still spry at 78, despite unique infirmities, he snapped last week when asked if he had any “interest” in the current Ocean Shore revival: “I’ve lost enough in it already.”