And this was the beginning of Republic, the town that
was built on a barren desert almost in the time it
would have taken to prepare the land, plant and grow
a crop of corn.
The stranger was the president of a townsite company
organized by Jefferson Worth while James Greenfield
was congratulating himself that he at last had that
gentleman in a trap. Worth had given the company
the land and had entered into an agreement whereby
he was to build a hotel and several business blocks
and furnish them, rent free, for one year.
With the railroad to deliver material in any desired
quantity, work was begun in a few days. The King’s
Basin Messenger and the papers in Frontera and Barba,
all owned by Worth, gave full accounts of the birth
of the new town and the reason why The King’s
Basin Central would not be built into Kingston, with
glowing accounts of Worth’s plans for the future
of the Company’s rival town. The Worth Electric
Company moved its plant from Kingston to Republic;
the ice-plant, the bank, the telephone office and
every enterprise controlled by Worth followed; while
many merchants, lured by the success of the Wizard
of the Desert in every undertaking and by the promise
of rent free, went with the Worth industries; and
from the world outside many, who had hesitated to
enter the new country before the railroad, rushed
in to locate in the new town. The first building
completed in Republic was a cottage for Barbara and
her father.
Meanwhile the work on the road to Barba and the South
Central District was begun. The “something”
prophesied by Mr. Burk had happened.
JEFFERSON WORTH GOES FOR HELP.
The winter following the birth of Republic witnessed
the greatest activities that had been seen in the
new country. The freighters’ wagons that
had once seemed so pitifully inadequate, as they crept
feebly away into the mysterious silences, were replaced
now by long trains, heavily loaded with building material
and goods of every kind and drawn by laboring engines
that puffed and roared and clanged and screamed their
stirring answer to the challenge of the silent, age-old,
desolate land. And still the work that had been
done was small in comparison with that which was yet
to do before the reclamation of Barbara’s Desert
would be complete. The acres of land untouched
by grader’s Fresno or rancher’s plow were
many more than the acres that were producing crops.
The miles of canals and ditches that were to be built
were many more than the miles already carrying water.
The tent houses and shacks of the pioneers were yet
to be replaced by more comfortable homes. The
frontier towns—big in that new country—were
yet to grow into cities. From the top of any
building in any one of the four towns one could look
into the barren desert.
