people turned again to their problems and from sea to sea Old Spanish Trail localities began to weave their section into the project for an unbroken trunkline across the continent.
.'3S?
Hardest Work West Florida to East Texas
The struggle of the past has been centered on the'Gulf area from West Florida to East Texas where over 6+ mi. of waterways, rivers, bays and drainage basins kept the tourist away. No national highway has had such an aggregate of engineering and financial problems; bridges have been costing at the rate of a million dollars a mile and many sections of road have been built up like causeways and have required three to four years to complete. Few people live in some sections and they would be uninterested, local funds would be scarce or else bonding to the limit of endurance would be necessary. From the west of Houston, Texas, to the Apalachicola River in Florida, the Old Spanish Trail must cross, near the Gulf, the drainage of the United Slates between the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Apalachians on the east. Sleepy rivers arc frequently in flood miles wide from storms far northward while the sun beams pleasantly along the Old Spanish Trail. We have worked in these sections jumping by train from place to place, from State to State. We came to know the people best where the conditions were worst. Now we can get anywhere by automobile and now we can begin to meet one another and learn to appreciate the others who also had the stamina to fight on, and we can now all cooperate to tell the
story of the Old Spanish Trail and its territory and make it popular with the Nation’s fifteen million auto owners.
Mountains and Plains West
West of Texas, to California, the mountains and plains were soon smoothed enough to put travel through; by constant improvement that western section has become almost a continuous pike. From San Antonio to California a dry climate, high elevations, continual sunshine, rolling hills, mountains and painted deserts prevail. It is the Great Southwest with its fascinating history, both Spanish and Anglo-Saxon, its growing cities, its lure for the tourist and opportunity for the settler. The East is different but its attractions are as compelling as those of the West. Now that the tourist is coming in he is finding the attractions along the Old Spanish Trail without a parallel along any other highway. This is the reason the demand for the OST literature is spreading so fast and why the schools are using it so extensively.
Present Rapid Progress
Today the construction program is active in all the eight OST states, >535,000,000 have been spent. JUO.OOO.COO to £15,000.000 of new funds will be made available during 1925-26.	95%
of the mileage .is now travclable in any kind of weather. The other 5% is not now a serious factor with the overland traveler but it embraces