National Park Service: Highways in Harmony (Southwest Circle Tour Roads and Bridges)

Southwest Circle Tour Roads and Bridges
Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon North Rim National Parks
Cedar Breaks, Pipe Spring National Monuments
Kaibab, Dixie National Forests

EARLY MOTOR ROADS

We lost our way and our tempers getting over the Scaharca bordering Kanab. A lone sheep herder saved us on the second morning out and we floundered into Kanab.
—tourist on U.S. Highway 89 in 1911

Until the World War I era, limited funding and technology restricted the development of good-quality roads. Federal and state governments contributed little to road building and maintenance, and county crews maintained the earthen roads with horse-drawn, split-log drags that levelled the surface until the first hard rains and narrow-wheeled wagons rutted them again. The State of Utah and the counties made some road improvements during the 1910s, but primitive roads connecting the region's parks and monuments persisted into the 1920s.

With the advent of tourism in southwestern Utah and the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, new facilities were constructed to provide visitors with information and services. This checking station, replacing an earlier structure, was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps at Zion's South Entrance in 1934. ZNP.

By the 1920s, the National Park Service, Union Pacific Railroad, U.S. Forest Service, Utah Road Commission, and Bureau of Public Roads had combined forces to wage an aggressive road-building campaign. Inspired by the Union Pacific's plans to market the regional parks, and funded in large part by the 1916 Federal Highway Act, state and federal agencies replaced most of the pioneer roads with modern, surfaced highways designed to withstand the region's burgeoning automobile traffic. Most of the main highways we drive today were completed by 1932 and have served since that year with few alterations other than some widening and periodic repairs.

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