Cruaaders-J
South Louisianians, faithful to their promisees, started building roads and by 1920 a good road existed fl-on 'organ City to the Texas line. From "organ City to Sew Orleans is the ancient "ississipoi Hiver delta nith problexo that have c03t many years of labor and many millions of dollars. Today, the Mississippi River bridge alone is costing 319,000,000
Eastertide 1919 this Louisiana—East Texas group ran another crusading motorcade to New Orleans, this time seventeen oars. Celebrations and feasts greeted them everywhere coupled with pledges to press the project to completion...and, it is reported, the fire and faith of pioneers flashed in their talks, and in their labors also as they forced their cars along.
Bringing Texas into the Fold
July 25, 1919 a conference was held at Houston and at that conference San Antonio was asked to assume national headquarters work and press the project to completion. The San Antonio chamber of Commerce accented and Harral Ayre3 was called in and made Managing Director. A national convention was held at San Antonio, November 1L—15, 1919* At.that convention sixty Sest Texas ranchmen gathered and debated the problem of road-building across their extensive ranch country, five hundred and ninety miles to BI Paso. Finally, they came
into the convention and pledged the road.....and the Old Spanish Trail was routiri
across that interesting Hill Country that had so often thrilled to the tread of Spanish grandees and to the prayers of the padres.
The two hundred and twenty.miles between San Antonio ana Houston were still and unsettled and complex problem when the convention adjourned but the transcontinental route now had its control points and the old Spanish cities of the far-southern country and the old Soanish trails of the centuries of Spanish pioneering were weaving together for the enjoyment of a new race of men. But for some years yet it was to remain an adventure to taavel this country.
Opening Roads
During 1919-20-21 crusaders stepped forth in all sections. There were conferences, conventions, local pathfinding motorcades, crusading motorcades, community feasts, bond-voting campaigns that failed and others that succeeded, and travels by the Managing Director from place to place; often he wa3 in mud and marshes and sometimes traveling by boat—ownership of a field automobile was not yet practical. Crusaders rose in various localities; men who gloried in facing problems and fighting through. Bridges, roads and paving must be financed. Rivera, bays and marshes must be crossed in the East and magnificent distances in the West. Incredible costa faced small communities. Graveled roads were being built in easy sections. Little "barrier sections" were being inmroved but the big "barrier sections" stood like ogres along the way; not a few of them but many and formidable.
Texas and the ’.Vest were opening a road; dry climate and good soils helped them.
But between the Atlantic^and San Antonio there were thirty-one river and bay crossings to be solved; problems for taxpayers, problems for engineers. Those rivers carry to the Gulf the drainage waters of more than half the continent and necessity demanded bridges should be built to withstand the titanic power of floods that reach a mighty volume as they near the sea.