interest; others have not recognized the importance of the moves in progress. This association and its membership have often been very much alone in the work of making this a national trunkline and thus assuring the OST cities and towns forever their position on a noted travelway.
34.—When the Federal Aid was restricted to 7% of the total mileage and interstate routes were being selected during 1922 to establish this 7% system this organization centered on this work for a long period and finally included every mile of this route in the Federal Aid mileage. The managing director spent months at Washington and the East and obtained the War Department declaration of military necessity and also the statement of United States Senators and Congressmen that a trunkline across the Southern Borderlands was a basic necessity to the United States highway system. When the recognition of the eight states and of Federal officials was finally established the work of securing precedence for the highway in Federal and State aid funds and in local appropriations proceeded with increasing success.
35.—This transcontinental route was laid originally from New Orleans through Shreveport and Dallas to El Paso. It is only 50 miles farther and those people have shown ability for establishing, popularizing and building their route. It has cost this association ten years of hard and active work to foster the expensive construction on this southern route between New Orleans and El Paso, often without the cooperation of cities and towns in this section that will profit in numerous ways from the success of the work. New Orleans becomes the natural gateway for Florida and California and for intermediate travel, and other OST cities and towns are assured of a travel movement that would not have come if the Shreveport-Dallas route had prevailed as the transit continental link.
36.—For all these years San Antonio headquarters have worked with local groups to find funds and solve these big problems. They who are acquainted with the physical and financial difficulties across this Old Spanish Trail country and with the years of toil to solve each of them feel assured no connected highway would have been completed for a generation except for the active cooperation that was fostered these many years by this organization. A more northern and less expensive route would have become established for most of the mileage.
37-—When the “United States Highways” were being selected as the permanent official national routes it was this organization again that protected the interests of this highway and its com-munities. Phis will now be marked as a United States Highway and be forever the acknowledged arterial trunkline. In this age when automobiles and highways are dominant factors in com-
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munity development foresight has been necessary to place a community on a permanent travel artery. These United States Highways embrace but 3% of the tota'l road mileage in the United States. The country has been passing through ten years of constructive selection of the national routes. The Old Spanish Trail communities have had the benefit of valuable service while these national arteries were being permanently fixed. It is an interesting reflection that of over 250 highway associations in the United States officially reported less than a dozen have really attained definite national standing. The Old Spanish Trail is one of these.
XIII
TRUNKLINE HIGHWAYS BRING THE SETTLERS
38.	—Two significant facts are established by the Florida development of the past winter. One is that all southern sunshine, climate and opportunity have been sold to the people of the North and the other is that the improved trunkline highway, not the railroad, brings the flow of people to seek new opportunities; the railroads profit after the new settlers with auto and truck carry forward their development.
39.	—We have never considered the Old Spanish Trail merely a highway but as a trunkline to receive and distribute all south-bound people and build up this South country. Our field trips extend into all the OST territory. The development in progress is already millions of dollars ahead of all prophecies. Our road and bridge construction in the East is $5,000,000 ahead of the 1926 expectation; the paving program from St. Augustine to San Antonio is several years ahead of expectation. People no longer buy a railroad ticket to some advertised or noted city and spend the season at a hotel; they get in the car and “take a trip;” the territory attractive to investment or settlement wins them. Cities that have subscribed big advertising funds are now learning this. The great private development projects eastward are healthiest where identified with the Old Spanish Trail or down the Florida East Coast with the Dixie Highway. These highways are constantly emphasized in the advertising, and now are being adopted by literary writers in national publications.
40.	—A railroad is financed by stockholders; the promoters are sustained by the prospect of dividends from freight and passenger travel. A highway project like the Old Spanish Trail succeeds, if at all, by the energy of a voluntary organization sustained by faith and by the helpfulness of State and Federal highway officials. There is no passenger and freight income to pay dividends to the promoters, the people ride and soon forget the toil -that linked the great trunkline across the continent.
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