Williams news., 1921-02-25
PROPOSAL OF MAIN NE-GRAhD CANON
 ROAD IS SHOWN ID BE IMPRACTICAL
Proposed Route Feasible Would Entail Tremen- dous Expense Snowbound Most of Year Would Only Duplicate Service of Existing Roads

toric memories of the past. For these reasons, and for the fur ther reason that tourist travel does not care to go on side trip for 65 miles, and then turn around and return over the same route that the National Park Service, as has been stat ed by Director Stephen T. Ma ther, want to see the Flagstaff road maintained. It can never be totally abandoned, for one third of the road will always have to be maintained by the county, no matter how many other roads to Grand Canyon may be built in the future. This same fact is also true of the Williams road.
 The road from Williams par allels the Grand Canyon rail road. This is an advantage readily appreciated by the tour ist. The road lies at lower all titude than any, other existing or proposed road will lie. This fact permits earlier travel in the spring and later travel in the winter. The Williams road does not run through a timber ed country, therefore the sun dries the road earlier and faster than is the case where a road runs through heavy timber. The road from Williams is snow-bound less than the pro- posed road from Maine would be, since the former road does not attain an altitude greater than 6,75O feet, while the Maine road would attain an aI- titude of 7,5OO feet near Spring Valley. As a matter of fact, the first community in Coconi- no county to become snow bound in winter, and the last community to emerge from hi bernation in the spring, is Spring Valley. Do you doubt these facts? Then ask Fred Platten, Fred Holden, Tom Me
 Williams, John Baumgartner, or in fact, any old-timer or forest ranger who has been sta toned Tt the Spring Valley Ranger Station.
 In view of the foregoing it can be stated without fear of successful contradiction that the road from Maine to Grand Canyon under the most favor able circumstances would be but a seven months in the year roadi
 The present winter has been the most open one that has been known in Northern Ari- zona for many years. Travel has hardly been suspended up- on the Old Trails Highway at all. Nearly every day sees tourists passing over it. The Williams Grand Canyon road IS open to travel, and has been open all winter. What would be the case right now were the Ma1ne-Grand Canyon road built? You could not get to OP1L LiS dI1oy III an auCOmO bile over the proposed road if your life depended upon iti
 If, therefore, it is impossible to reach Spring Valley by auto mobile in this, the most open known for years, and when practically every road in Northern Arizona is open-for Superintendent Reaburn re- turned only the other dav from Lees Ferry to Grand Canyon by way of the Flagstaff-G Canyon road what would be The condition of the proposed Maine-Grand Canyon road in an ordinary winter, when the snows begin in October?
 Nothing whatever could bet i ter serve to illustrate the abso- Inte absurditv of bandoning i -he two existino roads to Grand i Canyon than does the present I, road conditions of them | are open to travel at the pres ant moment, while the propos- |
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