Along the Highways and Byways

WHEN the Missouri delegation to the Sam Francisco World's Fair arrived at Grand Canyon one day this summer, Arizona's governor, Bob Jones, Mrs. Jones and a group of Arizona notables were on hand to greet the Missouri Special. Aboard that train were Gov. and Mrs. Lloyd C. Stark of Missouri and over a hundred good citizens of Missouri out to see the west. The occasion was marked by the spirit of celebration and good fellowship. The Missourians were on a holiday trek, returning home from San Francisco, where Governor Stark had dedicated the Missouri exhibit on Treasure Island. When the Missouri Special arrived at the depot at Grand Canyon, the University of Missouri band got out, stretched their legs, and soon the air was filled with the gay music of "Old Missou" and "Dixie." There were yells, good college yells, picture-taking, introductions, the exchange of pleasantries, and a few informal talks.

When Governor Stark introduced Arizona's governor to the folks from Missouri, he said: "Friends, I want to introduce to you Governor Bob Jones, governor of the grandest, most colorful, most scenic state in the Union . . . Arizona!"

In welcoming the visitors, Governor Jones did so by turning the Canyon over to them for the day. Governor and Mrs. Jones entertained Governor and Mrs. Stark; there were sightseeing trips, and altogether it was a grand day both for Missouri and Arizona Governor Jones admitted to the folks from Missouri that although Arizona had the Grand Canyon, the world's greatest scenic wonder, we had to go to Governor Stark's state for the Missouri mules one needs to make the trip down into the Canyon. Grand combination: those mules and that Canyon!

Roads have personalities and temperaments and funny quirks the same as anybody. Some roads are calm and placid and faithful, never kicking up any fuss, going on day after day, week after week, year after year, performing a good job, growing old gracefully and slowly.

Then there are some roads that are cantankerous and mean, always fussing up and causing trouble, amenable apparently to not even the finest treatment. Such a road has been that stretch from Flag staff to Ashfork on Sixty-Six.

This road was carefully built, surfaced with substantial oil cake! And then the road began acting up! During wet weather the road bed would take up water like a blotter, and this water seeping through the cinder base caused holes in the oil surface. When the road was built proper mineral aggregate for base course was scarce hence the use of cinders.

Patching was of no avail; so now the first contract for the concrete paving of this stretch of Sixty Six has begun. A modern high-speed highway of solid concrete will be the answer. What a road this will be when it is finished!

If that fellow Clarence Budington Kelland keeps on, the Arizona legislature should vote him a medal for distinguished service to the state. He is a voluble one-man chamber of commerce and since he has moved out here to live he has never missed a chance to put in a plug for Arizona.

Then in the Saturday Evening Post appeared his excellent novel of early frontier life in this state: "Arizona." Millions of people in this country and throughout the world were charmed by his stirring account of life in old Tucson-old Tucson pueblo in the days of the Indian wars and the wagon trains. And now the Columbia folks out in Hollywood are getting ready to make a motion picture of the novel, "Arizona," and judging by advance reports it's going to be one of those super-colossal epics that Columbio turns out every now and then.

The role of Phoebe Titus has been given to Miss Jean Arthur and what perfect casting that was. They say Cary Grant is slated for the role of Peter Muncie, dashing soldier in the western army. That, too, is what they call a natural in casting.

Wesley Ruggles, who created "Cimarron," has been selected for the director of "Arizona." Mr. Ruggles has been a director of conspicuous success, being considered one of the foremost directors in the motion picture industry.

Then Columbia, apparently determined to spare nothing in making "Arizona" one of the great classics of the cinema, is recreating old Tucson near modern Tucson. The board of supervisors of Pima county has given the Columbia studios a one-year lease on 500 acres in Tucson Mountain park, and there will be built an adobe village at a cost of some $500,000. Upon completion of the picture this village will be presented to the state as a permanent historical exhibit.

Production on this saga of the southwest will start this fall. The art and architectural departments of Columbia have been engaged in preparing the preliminaries for over six months.

You can readily see that "Arizona," as is fitting and proper, is to be no "quickie."

The month of July was a banner travel year in the history of The Enchanted Circle, that glorious, colorful region in northern Arizona extending from Boulder Dam to Gallup, N. M., from Zion and Bryce in southern Utah to the southern end of Yavapai county.

Travel at the Grand Canyon hit an all-time high. Boulder Dam and Lake Mead, Petrified Forest and many of the other scenic wonders in The Enchanted Circle witnessed unusually heavy tourist travel.

And strange as it may no doubt seem, there were more cars bearing foreign license plates at Grand Canyon during the month from four other states than there were from Arizona. At Petrified Forest, Arizonans in numbers also ranked fourth in visitors, with Texans leading the parade.

Sell Arizona to the world? Perhaps we should first sell Arizona to Arizonans.

Throughout the extensive miles of Arizona's far-flung highway system each day there rumble hundreds of heavy trucks. Faithful missionaries of commerce, these trucks carry world's goods to and from Arizona to the tune of millions of tons each year.

Too often motorists, passing these trucks on the highways, mutter: "There ought to be a law forbidding trucks the use of the highways."

It has been our observation that professional truck drivers are as a class the most careful of all drivers and the most courteous. Driving is their business. In their care is expensive equipment and only the driver who manages that equipment well and carefully stays on the payroll. If all drivers observed the same rules of safety driving and used the same courtesy on the road that the truck driver uses our highways would be safer for travel.

Give the truck driver a break!

The rains came to Arizona late in July and early August those fierce, heavy summer rains that sweep in to the tune of martial music rumbling thunder and the flash of lightning. The drouth was broken, and the cattlemen in the hills breathed a sigh of relief the official photographer for Arizona Highways; Max Kegley, found himself stranded in that wilderness between Mexican Hat and Kayenta in northern Arizona. The old car would run but he couldn't turn the steering wheel. He was bound for Monument Valley, but at that particular point it seemed that he was at the very end of the earth. There was no sign of habitation for miles, and the nearest help was twenty miles away. Twenty miles through the sand under an August sun in Navajoland is not what one would call a pleasant stroll. He sat down on the running board of his car and philosophically pondered the fate of crazy photographers who would risk life and limb for a pretty picture. Presently in the distance a car approached, slowly through the sand. It was a new station wagon, and the driver, of all people, was Barry Goldwater, taking one of his trips, all alone, into the lonely Indian country. Barry lent ready aid and both he who helped and he who was helped drove on to Kayenta. Yavapai county is anticipating a boom in mining because of the recent boost in the price of silver Joe Batiste, a colored boy who attends Tucson High School, has been in Europe this summer with the American track team. The experts say he is a likely prospect for the Olympic games at Helsingfors in 1940. Tucson to Helsingfors -a small world if you lift your heels over the hurdles in record breaking time Bisbee reports that four major league ball clubs will perform there next spring The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce has developed a first-class national advertising program to present for the coming fall and winter season September is now with us. Summer will soon be on her way. The schools are reopening. And we all look forward to fall and winter. There'll be football games at the colleges, cool weather will come to the desert and southern Arizona will be packed with folks from all over coming to loaf and grow young in the sun of Arizona's glorious winter months.... R. C.