Council to build a breakwater to protect the front beach shell road of the city. The Council, having spent nearly $15,000 repairing the road since 1893 only to see it washed away in every succeeding storm, agreed. In return the Council, however, insisted that property owners deed the road to the city. As negotiations to that end dragged on, Lopez began the work on his own. He engaged a pile driver to emplace 300 feet of creosote posts side by side in the water off the beach. Work halted when certain recalcitrant property' owners refused to deed their sections of the shell drive to the city.
In contrast to the squabbling over the beach road in the corporate limits of Biloxi, the cities, towns, and the Board of Supervisors of Harrison County at last united in an effort to construct a front beach drive along the Coast. On January 25, 1907, representatives of Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Mississippi City, and Biloxi joined representatives of the Board of Supervisors in a three car convoy to drive the proposed route and make recommendations.
The convoy departed Biloxi at 10:30 a.m. The cars rolled down West Howard Avenue, turned left on Porter Avenue, and then right on the beach drive at the lighthouse. The observers soon realized that a decision to place the new beach road parallel to and north of the trolley tracks would necessitate the moving back of many fences and at least two houses along the route from Biloxi to Mississippi City. The party encountered flimsy bridges and potholes to Mississippi City, but west of that place the road disappeared altogether. Consequently some of the observers boarded the trolley while others detoured the autos via Pass Road to Gulfport for a noon-time rendezvous with the trolley car riders at the Great Southern Hotel. After lunch the observers found the road through Long Beach to Pass Christian to be in much better shape than the road from Mississippi City to Gulfport.
The authorities agreed to lay out a 23-mile-long front beach drive parallel to and 50 feet from the north trolley rail. The roadbed was to be 30 feet wide with a shell drive 16 feel wide. All stumps were to be removed, high places cut down, and low places filled up or bridged. Thirty years after Roderick Sea! had first laid it out, a real front beach drive seemed to be assured. By mid 1908, the beach road had been shelled through all the Coast municipalities and the crews were closing the gaps between them.
At Gulfport the road left the beach and entered the city at IS1-*1 Street and stairslepped down to 14^ Street then to 13^ Street until 30^ Avenue was reached, at which place the road turned south to regain the beach. Exactly why that was done was not said, but for whatever reason the road did not run in front of Captain Jones’s Great Southern Hotel to spoil the view.
In summer 1909. the Biloxi Commercial Club formed a Good Roads Committee for the purpose of seeking ways to promote the building and maintenance of public roads. The Gulfport Commercial Union soon formed a similar committee.
On September 15, 1909. the Gulfport Commercial Union invited all Harrison County commercial unions and those throughout the state to meet at the Great Southern Hotel for a Good Roads Convention to be held on September 25. Among the topics for discussion w'ould be a resolution to ask Boards of Supervisors to allow citizens of a county to vote on bond issues
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