In Spite of Hill and High Water

WHEN A ROAD takes a notion to go somewhere it goes there in spite of hill or high water. It always has, it always will. And men come following after. The chicken and the egg may still be arguing about which came first but roads lie still in their beds and laugh, they know traffic is born only of their begging.

Roads had already covered a lot of territory long before man learned the art of writing signs in words; and since, they've kept going faster and faster. Until about a minute ago, as the life of roads is measured, the best they could do was to start out, hit or miss, each one for itself, and in the course of time managed to arrive at the end of the trail, bedraggle:l and worn thin by the struggle.

Generally speaking, cows have usually been given the credit for spying out unknown country for old roads. Mr. A. F. Rath, of the Arizona Highway Planning Survey, says an old cow, hunting water, did the best job because she couldn't climb a grade of more than six per cent; and, since road development amounts largely to reconditioning old trails, he wished cows of other days had always been a little sicker before getting thirsty.

But less than forty years ago, maybe twenty years ago, Arizona had to admit to visitors that even the most robust local cows could never have attained some of the spectacular results encountered here and there in the state. For according to old timers the mother trails of our present scenic highway system played a fancy game of hop-scotch over hills and through canyons, so daring their real origin may forever remain a mystery. These days we proudly call such roads fine scenic trailswhich they certainly are. But how they changed their forbidding personality to anything so inviting and altogether fascinating is quite a story.

It was not until the turn of the present century that the first Good Roads movement on a National basis was sponsored, which, of course, was a turn in the right direction although it amounted to no more than the removal of the biggest boulders and the keeping of the mean annual mud depth to a comparative quota with a minimum of real effort. That seemed about all Progress could think of to do for the country as a whole until the Federal Road Act was passed in 1916. Although an automobile had already ceased to be a novelty this Act was shaped primarily to improve existing mail routes only and made no provision for the integrating of trans-continental roads. So, in the different states roads continued to start or stop at will on a take it or leave it basis. Those were the days when farmers, especially near state borders, kept an extra team hooked up, ready and willing at exorbitant price, to tow cars across unnavigable gaps.

OUR HIGHWAYS IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS...

And it took lawmakers five years to figure that one out. But, at last, in 1921, The Federal Highway Act was passed demanding continuity of roads as a requisite of federal aid. This required each state, first, to designate a road system connecting cities, counties, and adjoining states; second, to spend federal appropriations on this system only. Naturally that helped a lot but in the matter of road standardization it still left too much to the whims of the state. It was just about then I first adventured crosscountry-chains on wheels, shovels tied on behind, and extra gasoline in cans stowed amidship. What surprised me most on that arduous journey was how really whimsical some states could be. And for fourteen years nothing was done to curb their vagaries.

Then, in 1935, actual National Planning really began after Congress authorized that a percentage of federal aid, amount matched equally by the state, be spent on surveys to ascertain how, and how much, improvement was required to bring main connecting roads. and even secondaries, up to adequate, specified standards. This, under Federal Public Roads Administration, was the biggest peace time project ever undertaken-not excepting the fish bowl birth of our present defense army, which in itself is helplessly dependent on the status of this belated road program.

During all the long years while these ponderous wheels of progress were rolling so slowly across the continent, little roads and little people, in neighborhoods, in counties, and in states, were struggling as best they could in isolated groups to meet immediate, local demands. In Arizona this era wasn't easywild, rugged country; incredible distances; sparse population; and exceptionally diversified demands. The new-born Territory, separated from New Mexico in 1863, had fallen heir to a strange, unwieldy legacy of dismaying war trails worn in the rocks by Indian moccasins, dim trails where trappers had trod the wilderness; early Mormon trails which only the true missionary spirit could ever have broken; and ancient Spanish trails which led even the Conquistadores to disaster and caused intrepid Padres to make permanent camp and build missions. All wild trails-not an honest-togoodness road in the lot. But besides, there were spectacular switch-backs where miners had packed ore down sheer mountain walls; blazed ruts left by lumbermen who had doggedly snaked timber through tangled canyons; and crudely dragged short-cuts from isolatec ranches to stage roads or trading posts.

Only two main routes zig-zagged from one water hole to the next across the whole area The one in the south, adopted in 1857 as the first stage route, was already tragically marked by the bones and broken wagons of the fortyniners, bound for a pseudo California heaven only to have the real thing forced on them enroute. The northern cross-state trail was traveled almost exclusively by hunters, Indian traders, trappers, and military expeditions plodding toward the west coast. In fact, the first authentic attempt by Americans to traverse the entire distance with “modern” equipment occurred in 1846-47 when a military expedition, enroute from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Colorado, broke the first wagon road across the state. Records show they used fifteen muledrawn wagons but fail to reveal how many mules per wagon it required to fight through to the river. It is known, however, that not long after, some desperate imagination conceived the gamble of importing camels, to more or less replace wheeled equipment in transporting army supplies. Which actually occurred with rather ludicrous results, as the mules and camels belonged to different unions. Lt. Beale, however, thought well enough of the foreigners to employ them exclusively in his early surveys, and the army persisted in trying to negotiate with them for many years. Yet with all the miles they must have traveled they left the Arizona desert trackless even when turned loose near Gila Bend in 1877 they vanished without traces into oblivion. It is a pity they didn't leave us at least one authentic camel trail-we've got every other kind. (In the name of romance, let's pick out one and name it to complete the record.)

There is no argument that in those “good old days” getting about at all in the wild, new Territory was a stern business. From the very beginning better transportation ranked as the major problem. They tried everything. Even toll roads not many at first, but at least you could get out of Prescott, wagon and team, for the sum of five cents per every mile you lasted toward Fort Wingate or Gila Bend. In the course of time you could have a choice of several other destinations, equally attractive and expensive. And so it came about that the present highway system inherited the relics of this brave experiment also.

But it took the infant Territory a long time to grow up and shoulder its inheritance, as sprangling and unorganized an accumulation as ever came out of the past. A long forty-six years, from 1863 to 1909. Not even then was the first Territorial engineer appointed, and a tremendous amount of history was made in the meantime both in the road-bound Territory and in the world outside. Automobiles were scaring horses off the right of way and prosperous owners of “gasoline buggies” were getting elected to legislatures, but even yet a lot of things had to happen before salutary evolution produced the present form of Highway Commission and Highway Department in 1927. My goodness-1927? Unless you are still in high school that seems like just last week! Yet that is the whole time this organization has had to catch up and compete with states old enough to remember Peter Stuyvesant, the Pilgrim Fathers, or Ponce de Leon. That they have caught up and are successfully competing with everybody's roads anywhere is evidenced by the 271,140,615 miles traveled on Baby State roads in 1940 by foreign cars alone, as recorded by the ninety-three strategically placed traffic counters of the Highway Planning Survey. Traffic, you remember, follows roads. Always has, always wilBut to get back on the mainline of how Arizona's unique accumulation of pioneer trails is being transformed into a system of highspeed highways. I asked R. C. Perkins, engineer of district number two, what was the hardest job he had tackled so far. “Hard job? I don't know what you mean.” “Well, toughest job, then.” “Oh, that,” he laughed, “never had one I just get tougher than the job and opposition folds up.” How are you going to get hero stuff about men like that. You just have to ask the roads themselves. The modernized Coronado Trail, looped on cliffs nearer heaven than earth, and hanging there like a string blown against a rock wall that one could surely tell some tall tales. And Highway 60, from Globe to Showlow, through Salt River canyon, might easily match the tallest. Or, if you slow down and listen as you climb out of Oak Creek canyon you could hear a thriller of no mean proportions. All this history is very young, and so romantic it could not be exaggerated. Facts outstrip imagination in the The road to Boulder Dam, U. S. 93, sweeps majestically through the hills of Mohave County. This is another sample of highway building of which our citizens boast. Highway engineering at its best, the road meets all modern specifications. (Photograph by Norman G. Wallace.) same way as does the Grand Canyon. But all this still doesn't explain, step by step, how the transformation is actually accomplished.

So here goes my version. These days, when a road gets into the hill-or-high-water frame of mind, one Percy Jones, chief locating engineer, straps on his canteen and wanders off in the general proposed direction, appearing eventually at the other end with all old-trail fragments oriented; passes, fords, and missing links in his mind; and a mass of incidental information in his pocket. When I was bothering him to romance a little about his adventures since 1916, he shied away from "that stuff," but did remark that he was constantly surprised at how many people long ago found their way into the most inaccessible, least known parts of Arizona. Holes dug in remote cliffs by daring prospectors; primitive arrastras miles from any signs of civilization; forlorn foundations of forgotten homes on the banks of nameless creeks; a peach tree planted by some lonely woman in a hidden canyon-these things did bring him to say, "You can't feel like Columbus no matter how far you go."

Later, crews of surveyors pick up the Jones' trail, bid their families goodbye, and live in the wilderness until preliminary reports can be assembled plenty of rough going for the boys on this camping trip but they shrug off such suggestions with "it's all in the day's work."

Next over the route goes the diplomatic delegation and if they do not secure the right of way with smiles, and this-and-that, then comes into action the legal department. While all this is getting straightened out, tentative plans turn into blue prints; sub-surface soil samples are cored out at intervals all along the proposed route sort of like doctors make blood tests before major operations. And, since different "patients" need different treatments, prescriptions of road-building materials bubble and settle and harden in mysterious vats and tanks in the laboratory. Estimates grow by the yard as materials are decided upon and listed; bridges are figured and fitted into the pattern; and it is about time for contractors to get the news that something is going on in their line. After a few more surveys and numerous consultations on technical problems, contracts are signed and battalions of mobile equipment are tuned up ready to roll. It is then that everybody takes a hitch in his harness, and a veritable army of experts move onto the job. (I know I've left out a lot I never built a road-but you get the general idea.) Don't ask me why road building that used to sort of take care of itself has now grown into such a colossal undertaking. Get a grip on your steering wheel and ask yourself. It sometimes takes three feet of stabilization under the surface you ride on to keep you in good humor; you explode and fly off the road unless you can see far, far ahead; you fight curves like they were personal insults and you want to get there faster every time you go places. No wonder so many men must go ahead of you and blast off mountain sides; cut through hills and fill in canyons; build underpasses and overpasses and foolproof intersections; maintain warnings of curves, dips and winding grades; and constantly repaint the white line where you cross and recross it instead of staying on your side of the road. Making what you call a good road takes a lot of doing. The world today rides for pleasure and demands that it be delivered unblemished every mile of the way.

Even so, after a person achieves the habit of really seeing his road, a pause along the way now and then also affords a certain pleasure that unbroken speed precludes. Such an unexpected pause turned out to be the high spot in my last Fourth of July celebration, only the shooting and the show took place actually on the afternon of July third. It happened in Queen Creek canyon and had to do with the spectacular reconstruction now being done that winding, tunnel encumbered highway between Superior and Globe.

It was lucky we were stopped on a down grade in perfect ringside position to watch one