The first automobile roads across the desert were maintained and promoted by booster groups, not funded by the government. Near the beginning of the 20th century groups like the Automobile Club of SOuthern California (later to become the "triple-A," the American Automobile Association) adopted highways, often naming them, maintaining them, posting signs on them, marketing them and lobbying government to make them official.

Often these groups competed. The boosters of the Lincoln Highway promoted a road from New York City to San Francisco by way of Reno and Sacramento. The National Old Trails Road from Baltimore to Los Angeles followed what later became Route 66 from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Los Angeles. The misnamed Old Spanish Trail started in "old Spanish" St. Augustine, Florida and followed the route of present day I-10 and I-8 to San Diego by way of Yuma, AZ. Clamoring for attention in this din was the group in San Bernardino County promoting the Arrowhead Trail, Salt Lake City to Los Angeles by way of Las Vegas. This route originally went through Cima and Searchlight, later Nipton, mostly following the "north fork" Salt Lake Railroad tracks.

As Leo Lyman relates in "The Arrowhead Trails Highway: California's Predecessor to Interstate 15" [www.wemweb.com/arduous-road/arrowhead_trails.html]:

"During the spring of 1917, as the nation was adjusting to involvement in World War I, some opponents of the Arrowhead Highway, perhaps from the San Francisco Bay area, informed the United States War Department that the infant Los Angeles to Salt Lake City road was simply an unproved paper project. The military was just then designating a highway system to serve as an alternative if the railroads were disabled during wartime. Arrowhead Trails officials heard the allegation and in cooperation with the United States Army immediately organized a timed one-car road race, which although it was staged during a period of considerable rain and mud, would demonstrate how fast the new route could be traveled... The trip took but thirty-six and a quarter hours, including time out for meals and some remarkably quick tire changes by the sergeants. This was the fastest time ever recorded between the two cities, despite driving in a blinding storm for 150 miles. The drivers asserted that the trip could be made easily in about twenty-four hours under anything like normal weather and road conditions. The War Department changed its policies because of the demonstration, although they designated the Cima cut-off blazed by [the race] rather than the common and marked route still through Searchlight. The eminent practicality of the new highway was again fully demonstrated by the well-publicized road rally."

Finally, the opening in 1920 of Zion National Park in Utah provided sufficient public interest in the road from populous Los Angeles, and the Arrowhead Highway became a reality.

Boosters were also instrumental in getting later, monopoly-breaking rail lines into southern California.

Last update 12:18 PM Fri. 27-Feb-2004 by ABS.