Vehicle Superintendent Explains Important "Rules of the Road" for Benefit of Automobile Drivers

JANUARY, 1928 BREAKING A TRAIL THROUGH BRIGHT ANGEL CANYON

(Continued from page 9) entire trip to Point Sublime, where the mapping operations were resumed, consumed six days.

There was no thought, during the ten weeks while we were on the Kaibab Plateau, of sending back to the south side of the canyon for supplies. The Bass crossing could not be negotiated by one man, nor even by two, and the whole party numbered only four. Instead we sent to Kanab, Utah, although that place was 75 miles distant by trail and the packer had to make a full week's journey to do his shopping there and return to the camp on the rim.

BRIGHT ANGEL BECKONS

As autumn set in, and the prospect of a snow storm grew more and more imminent, (heavy snows begin to fall on the Kaibab Plateau usually early in November) we were forced to consider a retreat to the south side. The survey by that time had progressed as far east as the head of Bright Angel Canyon and we found ourselves directly opposite Grand Canyon station, and only 13 miles distant from it in air line. Again Bright Angel Canyon beckoned to us as a possible avenue, and eagerly we scanned its sides for a practicable way down.

Now Bright Angel Canyon is carved along a great fracture in the earth's crust, a "fault," as it is termed by geologists, on which the strata are offset vertically by more than a hundred feet, and the lines of cliffs are consequently broken. The same fault extends southwestward into the embayment on the south side of the chasm and has made possible the building of the old Bright Angel Trail, now familiar to thousands of tourists. It did not take us long, therefore, to discover a route along this fault where the Red Wall, the Cliff of the Coconino sandstone, and the lesser cliffs are interrupted by slopes of debris.

On the very day when we started to examine this route, by a remarkable coincidence, there emerged from the head of Bright Angel Canyon two haggard men and a weary burro. These men, Sidney Ferrell and Jim Murray, had explored up through the Canyon and finally had fought their way along the fault zone.

At once the prospects of the return of the survey party by this new route became brighter. However, it does not follow that where a small burro was boosted up, a pack train of heavily load-ed horses and mules can come down in safety. Two of the party, therefore, set themselves the task of cutting out brush and rolling out logs and boulders. so as to make a reasonably clear way for the pack train. And this work they carried all the way down to the mouth of the Canyon.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

On the seventh of November, when heavy clouds presaged a change in the weather, we hastily broke camp and proceeded down our new trail. So steep was it in certain places that the animals fairly slid down on their haunches. So narrow between the rocks was it at one point, that the larger packs could not pass through and had to be unloaded. Of accidents there were more than can here be chronicled, but none of them, fortunately, was of a serious nature. The mule carrying the most precious burden, the instruments and the newly made maps-was led with particular care, but she lived up to her reputation and made the trip without a stumble.

CANYON BOTTOM REACHED

By noon the bottom of Bright Angel Canyon was reached, and then the party threaded its way down along the bouldery creek, crossing and recrossing it to knee depth no less than 94 times. Camp was made a short distance above the boxed-in lower part of the canyon, and a large bonfire was lit so that the people on the south rim might see that we had successfully reached that point. Ferrall and Murray had preceded us and had made known our intention of returning via Bright Angel Canyon. That night it rained and the following morning we beheld the rim of the Kaibab Plateau white with snow. Evidently we had left none too soon.

After a sojourn of several days in Bright Angel Canyon, during which the course of the stream was duly mapped, we proceeded to the river and once more faced the problem of crossing it. With the aid of a boat loaned by a friendly prospector, however, this was accomplished with little difficulty, for the animals, now homeward bound, had separately lost their fear of the river. Soon, however, we were scrambling up the prospectors' steep burro trail and without serious mishap reached our goal on the south rim.

The next year, when the survey was extended eastward, Bright Angel Canyon became our regular route of travel across the Grand Canyon, both north-ward and southward, although the trail remained as rough as ever. A steel row boat, in two sections, was packed on mules to the river crossing, to replace the wooden boat which had been swept away by the flood. Some years later enterprising citizens of Kanab, in order to promote tourist travel to the north rim, improved the trail up Bright Angel Canyon, and spanned the river with a steel cable along which a traveling carriage large enough to hold a pack animal could be hauled across.

Page Twenty-one

When the National Park Service took over the Grand Canyon in 1919, finally, it set to work in earnest to make Bright Angel Canyon the main avenue for travel across the chasm. It built a good modern trail the Kaibab Trail, as it is called, from Bright Angel Point to Yaki Point and replaced the steel cable by a fine suspension bridge. Needless to say, it has afforded the writer no little satisfaction in 1925 and again in 1927 to travel over this new, and to him, almost luxurious route.

COUNTY ROADS

(Continued from page 15) nix to eight miles beyond Hassayampa, state highway; state highway to Springs, condition fair.

Hasayampa to Tonopah-Belmont mine, road in good condition.

Wickenburg-Vulture road being repaired; Vulture to Tonopah Belmont mine, desert road; condition of both roads fair.

Hot Springs Junctions-Hot Springs, road to Maricopa-Yavapai county line fair. Repairs under way.

Black Canyon road-Phoenix to Maricopa-Yavapai County line under repairs, 75 per cent complete, including surfacing.

Camp Verde road, condition good as far as Camp Creek.

Phoenix to Fort McDowell, desert road, condition good.

Roads in Salt River Valley, condition good.

Phoenix-Higley, pavement and surfaced road; Higley to Rittenhouse, one and one-half miles surfaced, balance unimproved.

The Board of Supervisors is creating boulevards out of all the main paved roads entering the city, and expect ultimately to make all dirt roads boulevard stops at intersection of paving, and are contemplating erecting signs at the end of paving where the road ends abruptly by reason of offsets or otherwise.