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Published Weekly Of Alan
Volume II. i .

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DECORATED BY SPANISH ICING
FOR SKILL IN TRACING OLD ROUTE
Modestly quiet of manner, at the same time genially responsive to interested inquiries about his work, a distinguished man livse in Alamo Heights. This is Harral Ayers, who, for his great accomplishment in forwarding the work on the Old Spanish Trail, was decorated by the King of ' Spain.
This honor of the “Condecoration of Isabella La Catolica” took place last April in San Antonio, the occasion be. ing invested with all the dignity of old world ceremony and courtly procedure. It is said that San Antonio is the only American city that has ever witnessed such an honor.
The jeweled decoration carries with it the title of Knight Commander, and is inscribed on one side with the Spanish words “loyalty and merit”— truly descriptive of the leading characteristics of the man upon whom it was conferred.
When Mr. Ayers occepted the leadership of the proposed trail building, it seemed and all but impossible task. There was no travelable road through the south from east to west. What roads there were all ran north. Automobiles wound through mud, cattle-trails, and deserts, with waits at the many rivers for undependable ferries.
The Spaniards in their days of exploration, extended their missions and colonics from Florida to California with such difficulties, the marvel is that they reached Texas. But the idea of finding the old trail followed by these early seekers of new empire, and building it for all future time, intrigued the mind of a man who was in San Antonio in quest of health.
So, for eleven years, Mr. Ayers devoted himself to making the mythical old trail a reality. Today, the Old Spanish Trail is one of the noted ^ highways of the United States; the
pioneer history of the Spaniards is attracting more and more attention; Spanish architecture and atmosphere are being revived, and the road, a ribbon that links St. Augustine to San Diego is an accomplished fact.
It is appropriate to conclude with tho quotation from Ruskin, that in the writing might have had such a noble achievement for subject—“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for the present delight, nor for the present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for and let us think that a time is. to come when men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance, “See! This our Fathers did for us!”
Ayers was born near Trenton, N. J., on a country farm in 1869. Ho attended country schools during his boyhood. In his young manhood his predilection for finance, which has been so strongly attested in his later years, showed itself in his early connections in the New York world of money affairs.
For several years he was associated with the business partners of J. P. Morgan company, in their sideline finances and independent activities. And war, Mr. Ayers was director of a nine-million dollar receivership.
So, with such experience in the world of finance, his eventual con. nection with the project of building the Old Spanish Trail, with its inevitable expenditure of many millions of dollar's, became something more than the happy accident, it at first seemed.
Mr. Ayers, in New York City in the winter of 1917, furthering the War campaigns for money, suffered a breakdown, and seeking restoration of his health, took the sea-voyage from New York to Galveston, and came by rail to San Antonio, expecting to go on to the west coast, and to Hawaii. But San Antonio exerted its prover. bial charm, and Mr. Ayers remained here, golfing and enjoying leisure, until August 1919, at a conference held in Houston, San Antonio was asked to assume leadership of the movement to restore the Spanish Trail, and Mr. Ayers, through the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce was selected as the man to carry the project through.
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