COB STRUCT 101? 0? TIC OLD SPAUISf TRAIL A HI3C03D III ACHIMVMM'&T
The Old Spanish Trail has been one of the most difficult to finance and build of all the national trunk lines but something of the dauntless spirit of the cadres and of the conquistadores flamed again for the men who knew this southern borderland country decided the old trails and the new should bo welded together into the nation’s greatest travelway. How it is the most complete arterial highway across the continent and the only one open all the year. Over *70,000,000 have boon spent for road,rnr£ bridge and paving construction. Twenty miles of bridges were completed during 1927 and seventeen miles more were completed the spring og 1928.
Until construction opened the way across the great rivers, bays and drainage basins in the last and the great ranges in the Rest only a series of unconnected roads offers '- doubtful chance to cross the continent. Ferries that in the past distressed travelers no longer exist. Two ferries remain, the Mississippi River at Bew -Orleans and Berwick Bay at Morgan City , Louisiana, with officio* service and all-night sche-ules.
In the Mast the waterways are crossed at points where under-water foundations have been difficult or where floods spread rivers out miles wide.	Two-thirds of the drainage waters of the continent
are crossed by this highway near the Gulf of Mexico where the accumulated waters are a mighty fores. In the Rest are mountains,
vast ranches and plains----all strangely fascinating, but a country
so sparsely populated there was little local need for a highway; the force of a national project had to be cultivated.
The engineers, highway commissioners and the men behind the work have risen to high achievement. The spell of the country is in their blood. Thoy have connected Florida and California thru Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Hew Mexico. f.nil
Arizona----the country of the Gulf of Mexico and the Mexican Border.
They have crovidod pleasures for the people every day of the year and they have opened the greatest frontier of the Ration to settlement and investment.