Williams news., 1912-05-18
ION HISTORIC AND
 SCENIC LINES'

staff, with reference to the selection of the northern route of Arizona the old Santa Fe trail-as the transcontinental highway that is being boosted by the automobile and good roads associations all over the country:
 ''I read with great interest the copy of MT. Thomas B. Wilby's let ter addressed to MT. Walter Will Hams, about the Transcontinenta Highway. I am immensely inn pressed by MT. Wilby's clean-cut statement of the reasons for the es- tablishment of national highway between Santa Fe and the coast, on exclusively historic and scenic lines. The instant the matter is presented to ones attention it be- comes evident that these two quali- | fications, with the further one of practicability, are absolutely re- quisite for the success of any im- portant highway. If they are not taken into consideration and made the basis of the route selected it will be but short time until those making use of the highway will branch for themselves on the nat ural course as designed by historic and scenic reasons, and will aban- don any highway established for the purpose of contributing to the commercial interests of any partic- ular territory. A n ational high way, if it is going to be any success at all, will be made so precisely by those who use it for the purpose of visiting those parts of the country made sacred by historic associa- ton and attractive by unusual scenery.
 "The highwayman, (if I may use this term in the good sense which it originally bore, and to which the good roads movement is going, I hope, to restore it), from New York and Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and Illinois and Nebraska, when he motors to Arizona will want to see the point where Coro- nado camped with his gentlemen's exploring party at Bernalillo, in New Mexico; he will want to cross the very stretches of country that | the first detail of European civili zation traversed on its way to the Grand Canyon in 1541; he will want to see the site of the first cap itol of Arizona at Navajo Springs; the great Chalsehone Park, with it's treasures of rainbow color impris- oned in the forest turned to stone, near Adamana; he will want to travel, for some distance at least, the old Star-R Route train; he will want to visit the Hopi villages, the scene to this day of the most re- markable indigenous religious rite, in the form of the snake dance, known on this continent; he will want to see the marvellous colors of the Painted Desert of which Van Dyke tellsso beautifully, and which Sauerwein, Lungren, Farny, Akin and Rollins have painted so touch ingly; he will want to see the banks of colored clays by the shores of the Little Colorado river, when the moonlight sleeps upon them more sweetly than it slept upon the bank at Belmont; he will want to see the tremendous chasm at Meteor where, what was practically min iature other-world, collided with this. with the result of leaving a scar 600 feet in depth and more than a mile in diameter upon the face of our desert; he will want to see the great gash that cleaves the rock for a depth of over 200 feet and for distance of many miles at Canyon Diablo; he will want to see the remarkable prehistoric ruins in Walnut Canyon just south of
 Flagstaff; he will want to see the cave dwellings, the oldest form oi human habitation known on this continent, lying just east of Flag
 staff; he will want to see Sunset