The Citadel of Democracy

Business as Usual

The second month of the war year finds the travel business in Arizona going on as usual. The Rock Island-Pacific romantic "Arizona Limited," direct and non-stop from the winter grip of Chicago to sun-blessed southern Arizona, each week brings hundreds of visitors out here to the West. The great bus lines, the Pacific Greyhound Lines and the Santa Fe Trailways, carry other hundreds each week from less favored climes to Arizona. The airways and highways, leading to the Land of the Sun, further add to the migration of winter visitors. Hotels, ranches and resorts, comfortable inns and auto courts, are crowded with thousands of visiting Americans. The travel business, as the saying goes, is as usual.

It is fitting that such should be the case. The climate and the landscape of Arizona are peculiarly fitted for the needs of people in these trying times. Here one can rest and relax and regain the new vigor and energy for the exacting tasks required in these days of war. Happily for us all the horrors of war have not reached our shores, and by the grace of God and the strong armed forces they will never reach our shores. Yet the problems of war are with us all every day. Whatever you do, whatever your occupation, the war is with you. The tempo of our economic life is speeded up by emergency. The civilian, engaged in the arduous and constant task of keeping the war machine going at full force, must come to the point where frazzled nerves decree a moment of respite and rest. Thus it is that a vacation in quieter places is the answer to the civilian's needs. Arizona supplies the answer. Arizona supplies that cherished moment.

The question arises: "What will happen to the motor travel business in Arizona when the tire shortage becomes acute?" Naturally, the great mass travel during spring and summer will change in nature, but, we believe, not in numbers. More and more people will be coming to Arizona for their vacations, and where they would normally come in their own cars, they will now come by train and bus line. It is fortunate for us all that the broad miles of Arizona are securely wrapped in a great web of rail and motor bus transportation. Do you want to go to the Grand Canyon, South Rim? Merely ask your Santa Fe agent for information. Or to the North Rim? The Union Pacific will take care of you. Oak Creek Canyon? The Painted Desert? Southern Arizona? The Apache Trail? Lake Mead? The Greyhound Lines and the Santa Fe Trailways can answer all your questions. You can leave the old family bus all wrapped up safely in the garage and come out West to Arizona and see all of our land you want to see, comfortably and reasonably. An emergency arises. The rail, motor bus and airway transportation system rises to meet the emergency.

As it is, you will stay longer in one place, and that is good, too. The lady school teachers from the Middlewest who came through a couple of years ago and allotted themselves one hour at each of seventeen Southwestern national monuments and three national parks should have stayed at home. You can't enjoy travel in our land that way. Stay at the Grand Canyon a week and then you'll really begin to enjoy America's most beautiful natural wonder. Our scenery was made to loaf in, to enjoy in easy stages. That's how it will be when people leave their cars at home and travel by rail and motor bus.

And then, too, it may mean the horse will come back to its rightful place in the travel sun. We could conceive of no more enjoyable vacation than to rent a couple of Navajo ponies and travel for a week or so through Navajoland, the most beautiful land under the sun. And what could be more fun, and cost less, than to rent a pack outfit and go fishing in the White Mountains of Arizona? Travel would then become high romance and adventure. R. C.