Hill

The plaintiff is now and for more than forty-six years has been the owner of certain real estate in Ventura County. She had created on her land an avenue for her convenience and pleasure, and planted thereon as early as 1880 some fifty-five walnut trees of the variety known as black walnuts in parallel rows, the rows being some twenty feet apart. They have grown to be large trees, some of them thirty inches in diameter, and having been planted by her own hands in her younger days, she is, naturally, very much attached to them. About the year 1898, and prior to the incorporation of the city of Oxnard, the board of supervisors of Ventura County desired a roadway through the property of the plaintiff, taking in as part thereof the strip upon which said walnut trees were growing. At first she refused to allow them to do so. Thereafter they called in a body at her house and discussed the matter with her. At that time she stated that under no circumstances would she sell a right over her real property for road purposes to the county; stating, as her objection, that the roadway would destroy the walnut trees which she had planted years before and which she prized so highly. She feared if…