The land out in Wineville (today's Mira Loma) is very sandy which presented many hazards in the good old days. The sand could grab a car's wheels and stop it dead in its tracks. If one of our famous Santa Ana winds was blowing it would pick up the sand, scour the paint right off your car, and bring visibility to zero.
The road through Wineville, back in 1914, was one of the major roadways drivers would use to get from Los Angeles to Riverside. Back then the road was not paved. Instead a layer of straw was laid down over the sandy soil to give cars a better surface to drive on. The problem with using straw to surface a road was made evident in July 1913. The straw caught fire, trapping as many as a hundred cars on one side or the other of the fire.
Under other circumstances the cars could have just been driven around the fire. However, with Wineville's sandy soil, the drivers were reluctant to do so because it was likely the car would get stuck. A group of three men from Riverside were returning from Mt. Baldy when they were confronted by the fire. They needed to get back to Riverside sooner rather than later so they went ahead and drove their Ford off the road and around the fire. The Riverside Enterprise said that "by considerable shoveling and pulling they got around the fire."
Another intrepid soul took his life in his hands and drove through the fire. Likely the straw was smouldering or had low flames and wasn't a raging wildfire. Still, even with the straw there was a likelihood that a car could get stuck in the sand on the road, and stuck in the middle of the fire. The car could have burned or worse, its gas tank could have exploded. However, the driver in question made it through the road fire and lived to drive another day.
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