"Yuma extends to all of its thousands of visitors today its warmest welcome. We all rejoice in the completion of the great highway ... and in this celebration put up another monument to the progress of the Great Southwest." 

Ninety-five years ago today, this pronouncement next to the masthead of Yuma's Morning Sun started a day of festivities celebrating the completion of a highway stretching across Arizona and on to the Pacific. As US 80 and part of the coast-to-coast Bankhead Highway, the route went through southeastern Arizona to Tucson, north and west into Phoenix, over and down to Gila Bend and southwest to Yuma. From there, the highway replaced a plank road across the sand dunes between Yuma and California's Imperial Valley, then offered ways to either San Diego or Los Angeles.

An estimated 5,000 people traveled to Yuma for this celebration, including those carried by a 100-car caravan organized by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. According to The Arizona Republican, there were "representatives from every community west of the New Mexico line which is on the highway. These include Tucson, Bisbee, Douglas, Tombstone and other southern Arizona cities, as well as Globe and Miami in the mining districts." 

The Phoenix-to-Yuma portion offered the infrastructure featured in the 1920s pictures at top and middle right (thanks, State Archives), including a gravel surface and crossing the Gila River along the apron of Gillespie Dam (construction began soon after on a bridge there). In its day, however, this was an achievement worthy of the Homeric prose it inspired. 

"We are all happy and well may we be," The Morning Sun opined. "Through sweat and toil, through years of disappointment and adverse conditions, Yuma and Imperial Valley with San Diego and Southern Arizona have worked for the construction of this road and we are reaping the reward of work well done."

Heroic efforts were needed to accommodate the thousands who flooded into Yuma, which at the time had a little fewer than 5,000 residents.

According to The Arizona Republican: "The streets of Yuma are decorated with flags and banners and glad hand committees welcome the strangers as they motor into town. Nothing had been overlooked to complete a celebration that has lived up to all advance notices. Every hotel is crowded and the committee on reservations worked late this evening assigning travelers to private homes and the latchstring is open to all."

US 80 entered Arizona along the path of what now is State Route 80, passing through Douglas, Bisbee, Tombstone and Benson, then over to Tucson. It traveled along the alignment of what is now SR 79 to connect to what is now US 60, then through Phoenix, out to Buckeye, south to Gila Bend and on to Yuma. Much of its general path between Phoenix and Yuma is what drivers see along today on SR 85 and Interstate 8. 

According to accounts from the time, a good deal of the celebration looked to the west of Yuma, where a real roadway was replacing a path built of planks across the ever-shifting sand dunes. The image at bottom right depicts this as the "Highway Across the American Sahara." 

"The graveled surface highway west of here that supplants the old detour to the plank road over the sand hills was one long stream of motor cars," The Arizona Republican reported. Meanwhile, the article said, many drove the plank road, apparently for old times' sake.

An open-air celebration at Yuma's Sunset Park featured bands from as far away as San Diego and speeches by a bevy of leaders including Arizona Governor George W.P. Hunt and Governor Friend William Richardson of California. 

It's clear from the newspaper accounts how much this transportation link was improving the quality of life in the young, growing state of Arizona, and also how much The Morning Sun and others looked forward to more such achievements:

"Today, in Yuma, we celebrate and make merry as we have finished another lap and erected another milestone in the progress and development of the Great Southwest."

 

Ninety-eight years ago, the Tombstone Epitaph's front page shared "about the best announcement that has come to Cochise County on road work for some time."

The State Highway Department's top engineer, Thomas Maddock, informed the newspaper that work had been approved to extend an existing 8.5 miles of highway between Tombstone and Fairbank, a stretch completed in 1919, west to the Santa Cruz County line. That was part of plans to create a highway linking Tombstone and Nogales along the path that today carries State Route 82. The story said Engineer Al Jenkins was moving a construction crew to Cochise County.

"Telephone advices received later from Mr. Jenkins from Patagonia were to the effect that he was breaking camp and loading all equipment today, ready to move tomorrow, and will begin throwing dirt Tuesday," it said. 

That was Tuesday, Feb. 7, 1922, so today is the anniversary of that dirt-throwing.

Various accounts from the time say this highway was an offshoot of the cross-country Bankhead Highway, which followed the path of what was then US 80 (now State Route 80) from the New Mexico line through Douglas, Bisbee, Tombstone and Benson. It then went to Tucson, Phoenix and eventually Yuma. According to the Arizona Republican, one goal of a Tombstone-Nogales highway was linking the Bankhead Highway with Mexico's highway between Mexico City and Nogales. That would create a valuable international connection for what was billed at the time as the USA's only all-weather coast-to-coast route. 

The map at top right, from a mid-1920s Highway Department report, shows the route of the Tombstone-Nogales highway. 

For the work creating 15 miles of highway between Fairbank and the Santa Cruz County line, grading with heavy equipment was to start at both ends, the Tombstone Epitaph said. The article spends quite a bit of time explaining the three camps being established to make this happen, including one at a ranch midway "for equipment, stock and other material." The interactive map at lower right allows desktop and tablet users to learn more about sites important to this construction project.

"The news that work will be started will bring joy to both Santa Cruz and Cochise county road advocates," the article said. 

A 1924 biennial report from the Highway Department's state engineer said crews had completed 52.3 miles, from Tombstone to Patagonia, of what would eventually be a 74.3-mile gravel highway. It noted that the 25 miles in Cochise County had been turned over to the maintenance department by construction crews. 

"This highway throughout is constructed along modern lines and is in excellent condition and repair," the report said. "With possibly the exception of a few miles in Cochise County, which should be sanded where the caliche surface during wet weather is inclined to become somewhat slick, only general maintenance is necessary."

Now State Route 82, the highway passes through gorgeous country, as you can see through these Google Street View images from Fairbank, Sonoita, Patagonia and approaching Nogales. You'll notice that today's highway is no longer gravel, so that somewhat slick caliche surface has long since been taken care of.

Next time I drive it, I'll think about the day almost a century ago when Al Jenkins' crew began "throwing dirt" to make this beautiful highway a reality.

 

The message is still as relevant as ever, but the delivery has definitely seen some upgrades in the past 30-plus years.

Today we travel back to 1987, when the first computer-operated dynamic message boards began operating on the Black Canyon Freeway in Phoenix. The message on the small (compared to our modern signs) two-line board reads "Carpools save gas & money."

Not quite a "Star Wars" pun, but a good start nonetheless.

Today we have more than 250 dynamic message signs across the state. You can see both the locations and content of them via our az511.gov Arizona Traveler Information site. There are now more than 20 descendants of this original board on I-17 alone. 

These modern boards, which contain three lines of 18 characters, display crash and road closure information, Amber, Silver and Blue alerts, and travel times in the greater Phoenix area or on I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff. 

And, of course, from time to time they display some more ... let's say, thematic traffic-safety messages. 

But that all can trace back to when these first boards went up 32 years ago. 

Back in the 1930s, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad tracks created a major bottleneck for vehicles using what was then US 87 through Winslow. Enter the Arizona Highway Department, which later became ADOT, and a project that created a grade separation known as the Winslow Underpass or Williamson Avenue Underpass.

The finest details surrounding the December 1936 dedication of this structure made for front-page coverage in the Winslow Mail, including an account headlined "Underpass Dedication Plans Set" from a couple weeks before the big day:

More than 75 invitations to attend the underpass dedication on December 15 have been mailed out by (sic) prominent men of the state by Walter Lindblom, secretary of the chamber of commerce. Included in the list are 30 Santa Fe officials, from President Bledsoe, to the high officials in the west.

City Engineer Frank R. Goodman, chairman of the event, promised a more detailed program within the week, according to the article, which added that elected leaders had authorized Goodman "to arrange for rental of sufficient lumber to erect a speaker's stand."

In case you were wondering about the entertainment, Goodman delivered "definite assurance" that school bands and the Sons of the American Legion bugle corps would participate.

It is practically assured that the state engineer and all members of the highway commission will attend, as it was at their request that the dedication was delayed two weeks.

According to ADOT's Arizona Historic Bridge Inventory, pages 510-513 to be exact, funding for the underpass came from the Hayden-Cartwright Act, a New Deal relief program from which quite a bit of money went toward eliminating hazardous at-grade railroad crossings. The report says Highway Department engineers designed it as a two-span reinforced concrete rigid-frame structure with mission-style architectural treatment. Here are the specs:

It's now State Route 87 running under the tracks in Winslow, and those tracks now carry BNSF Railway trains. But the Winslow Underpass remains essential for travelers and the community as well as an important part of Arizona's transportation history.

The call for bids went out in April 1936, and R.C. Tanner Construction Co. received the $150,000 contract. The contractor recruited much of the required labor – 70,000 man-hours in all – from the relief rolls, fulfilling one of the project's goals: putting people to work during the Great Depression. It took almost 300 cubic yards of concrete and 360,000 pounds of reinforcing steel to complete the underpass.

According to the Arizona Historic Bridge Inventory, the structure's pierced parapet walls and other details, shown in the 1930s photo at right from the State Archives, reflect an architectural style Highway Department engineers used for a number of grade separations. Those include Tucson's Stone Avenue Underpass, also completed in 1936. Engineers used distinctive architectural treatments to complement their surroundings.

That Winslow Mail article from 1936 doesn't say why the Highway Department and Highway Commission asked to push back the Winslow Underpass dedication by two weeks. But the delay obviously didn't put a damper on excitement surrounding an improvement that continues paying dividends today.

This week in 1915, according to a newspaper account from the time, a parade of decorated automobiles, a concert and horse races helped open the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge over the Colorado River at Yuma.

"Bridge Celebration: Yuma will celebrate as never before in history," the Arizona Sentinel and Yuma Weekly Examiner declared in a front page headline setting up the festivities on Saturday, May 22, followed by

Yuma citizens appreciate the kindly position which is assumed by the Arizona governor toward the coming celebration and believe that the executive proclamation will add greatly to its success. Though Yumaites are boosting the Yuma Project and the (sic) celebrating the completion of the great national highway bridge here we know that the entire Southwest will feel the thrill and benefit from every bit of energy put forth.

Let's all co-operate for the general good.

Now owned by Yuma County and visible from Interstate 8, this steel bridge with concrete piers and abutments was an important link in what was dubbed the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway and was the first highway span over the lower Colorado River. Here are the specs, courtesy of ADOT's Arizona Historic Bridge Inventory, pages 714-717 to be exact:

The bridge came to be after then-Representative Carl Hayden steered a bill through Congress in 1913. Because it provided a crossing for the Yuma Indian Reservation just over the river in California, the Office of Indian Affairs picked up part of the $72,000 cost, with the state of Arizona and California's Imperial County each pitching in $25,000.

It carried the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway for decades until I-8 arrived. Today it carries Penitentiary Avenue across the river. While it would be reasonable to assume that half of the bridge is in Arizona and the other half in California since it spans the Colorado River, it's entirely within Arizona thanks to how the state line runs through that area.

According to ADOT's Historic Bridge Inventory, the Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge is "the earliest and longest through truss in Arizona, the only Pennsylvania truss and one of the only three pin-connected trusses among Arizona's vehicular structures."

Of course, now I need to learn what all that stuff is so I can tell you. Give me a minute ...

OK, so a bridge truss is a support made of linked beams, often in triangles, that provide rigidity and spread out the load. A through truss goes above the roadway, while a deck truss goes below. A Pennsylvania truss has a curved top to help support longer spans. And a pin-connected truss has pins connecting the truss components at joints.

Now get out there and cooperate for the general good.