Arizona republican., 1910-12-14

by the authority of the legislature at
 it's last session is now pretty nearly
 all expended but fine showing has
 been made with it and a duplication
 of the amount would show more than
 twice as well for the reason that the
 hard jobs had to be attended to first.
 For instance the building of the
 Florence and the Verde river bridges.
 By their construction travel is made | possible for a long way each side. i even without the construction of the roads The road from Phoenix
 to Florence has not been contracted
 but the main embarrassment to nat
 ural wagon travel between Phoenix
 and Tucson has been the Gila river crossing. That is now almost completed work. A good road has been built by the convicts from the
 river to the prison and the bridge
 will be finished in a few days.
 It is now finished all except the
 dressing up the placing of the final
 tablet and the official opening It
 can be crossed all right by travellers
 now. Mir. Girand says the Florence people are talking of making the for maj opening of the bridge a gala oc- casion. getting up a celebration and inviting the world to attend.
 A United States standard water gauge is being placed on the bridge so people can tell whether there is any water in the river without gett- ing drowned in it. Also. Weather Observer Jesunofsky is preparing to place various kinds of weather para phernalia on the bridge so the Flor cnce people can have the kind of weather they want. In fact the bridge is to be a great public institution for dwellers in those parts, serving Flor ence as a sort of an information bur eau, almost city hall and board of trade combined. And MT Girand is just as proud of the bridge as the Florence people are. He says its d good piece of work. was built under his supervision, and he don't care who knows it.
 The material for the Camp Verde bridge over the Verde river is now practically all on the ground and the | bridge which is to be constructed by | the Missouri Valley Bridge Co. should | be finished within sixty days. It is | to be a steel structure with concrete | floor. When this bridge is completed | the next hard piece of work will be | grading the road over what is known | as Mogollon hill. When that is done, | even without any work in intervening | places one may easily drive by that | route from Prescott to Flagstaff and | the Grand Canyon.
 The Prescott Phoenix road has been completed for ten miles south | from Prescott and is another piece of work of which the engineer is proud. Work has been stopped for the winter but will be resumed again in the spring if present plans are carried out. This is the heaviest road work that has been done. Thousands of dollars worth of steel drain pipe has been put in and many culverts con- structed. Progress was necessarily slow but the work is in to stay. It has been done with a view to per manency. It is the one road that so far in a sense leads nowhere but it will eventually for the plan is to follow down the divide all the way to the lowladns north of the Salt River Valley. midway between the historic Black Canyon and the Walnut Grove roads. While the present completed | section of ten miles at present bcne-