By:  Progress For WHB

When you start a business from nothing the risks are highest but the possibility for reward is greatest; when you buy an existing business the risks are more modest, but the possibility of rewards are also reduced.  In 1945 the asphalt plant at 100 Rogers Avenue was built, and for over 70 years that first venture has been rewarded.

We have been a nation of risk takers beginning with the colonization of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.   In 1862 the Homestead Act rewarded the risk takers who were ready to settle the frontier.  With the passage of the Homestead Act  it was the policy of the government to give federal land away to settlers willing to risk everything, travel great distances, and build where there was nothing.

We support those who make something from nothing.  We even condone outright theft of private property to do it!  If a person takes a chance and occupies empty land, uses it, is obvious about it, and if the owner doesn’t throw him off the property within ten years he gets to keep that property without paying for it.  There is a risk.  If he improves the property, builds a home and clears the land he can still be ejected by the owner before the ten years has elapsed and he will have nothing.  This is the law of “adverse possession.”

When the asphalt plant on Rogers Avenue opened in 1945 the owner created a factory where there had been nothing.  At the same time he also planned to take air quality Continue reading Closing The Asphalt Plant →