PHOENIX TO YUMA HIGHWAY COMPLETELY SURFACED

Phoenix To Yuma Highway Now Completely Surfaced

WITH the publishing of this issue of Arizona Highways, one of the greatest road building projects in the state will be completed. The highway between Phoenix and Yuma, approximately 200 miles, a part of U. S. Highway 80 and one of the main east and west transcontinental and state routes will be completely hard surfaced or oiled. It is less than 10 years ago that this important road was only a desert trail often requiring two days to negotiate it. Then the highway department started its improvement, and a gravel surfaced highway was built connecting the Arizona metropolis and the important Yuma valley and city in the Southwest corner of the state. This highway for several years was regarded as an excellent highway and many travellers from other scetions of the nation thought it was a marvelous road cutting across the wide expanses of desert. But the life of a gravel road under the traffic conditions this important highway sustains is short lived. It was necessary that the highway department surRegrading the weak spots in the old road, building up the levels, placing of adequate drainage structures to take the place of the old dips, building overpasses at railroad crossings, and surfacing and oiling the entire distance that was not hard surfaced, and without any special financing, was the problem which the department had to face. The job was completed on April 15th. From January 7, 1930, to March 4, 1931, approximately 117 miles of the highway were completed. Over 11,048,478 square feet of prepared subgrade was made in that time; 133,000 cubic yards of crushed rock spread on the surfacing and over 2,572,000 gallons of road oil mixed and placed. The work went ahead with approximately 8 miles a month being finished.

Today, 1,200 to 1,500 cars per day pass over this highway between Yuma and Phoenix and four and one-half hours is about the usual running time.

Smith Lauds Safety Teaching in Schools

CHICAGO-Organized safety effort of the type which has come to the relief of the child en route to school will succeed in cutting down our accident toll in all walks of life, according to ex-Governor Alfred E. Smith, who recently addressed delegates to the Greater New York Safety Conference.

"While it would naturally be imagined that the greatest hazard to child safety is traveling the streets back and forth between the home and the school, the fact is that organized effort has cut these accidents to one-third the number happening in the home," said Governor Smith. "Inasmuch as the home is not organized for safety, accidents continue to happen frequently."

Judge "What is the charge, officer?" Officer "Driving while in a state of extreme infatuation." Ex.