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Show San Juan County Roads and Resources Calvin Black Originally when people came here, they came to settle under the instructions of Brigham Young. They had to have roads and access and resources to survive. As people developed resources, for example gold mining along the Colorado River, they had to have access. The uranium, die oil, and other things have also demanded a need for access and they have created our ability to pay. Let me give you an example. In the early 1950s and up to the middle 1950s the total assessed valuation of San Juan County was 3.8 million dollars. We were one of the poorest counties in the state of Utah, the largest and the poorest school district in the state. The revenue from that assessed valuation - the maximum levy that counties could collect - brought in less than $50,000. By I960, with the development of uranium ore, oil, and gas, die assessed valuation had gone from 3.8 million to 132 million. We were, at that point in time, the second wealthiest county on a tax base in the state of Utah. We did not stay there too long because the assessed valuation of the wealth from uranium, oil, and gas is dependent on the production of that resource and in some cases on the profitable production. So we went back down, then we went back up, and now we are going back down. Again, that is a major part of resources. But getting back to the roads, I remember when my dad, as the state road foreman, built the road from Natural Bridges to Hite. Art Chaffin had promoted the road with the Utah Industrial Development Commission. They were to come up 241 San Juan County with about $10,000 in cash on each side to build that road. My dad and his very meager crew were given the responsibility to build the road on this side. Art Chaffin got the contract as an independent to build the road from Hanksville down on the wash to Hite where diey put in a ferry. I went out there with my dad and I helped him flag the road. There were no culverts in the road so he would have to go through all that timber from there to Fry Canyon and it was very difficult. For each wash, and there were a lot of them along that drainage, we had to find a solid rock crossing or a place where it would not wash out easily and then get an alignment from one wash to another. They got to Fry Canyon where the canyon is so narrow you can jump across it, about 35 feet deep and about 35 feet wide at the bottom. They went to the mountain and cut some timber and made a bridge across there which saved about ten miles. They got on down to White Canyon and where the bridge goes now my dad had the idea if they could get some timbers and get the state to provide a little more money they could build a bridge across there because it is fairly narrow. They were not able to do that so from the point where you came around, North Point I believe it is, and you look across to Farley where the road went down and crossed White Canyon, it was about two miles across, but it took ten miles by the road. They did put in a bridge across White Canyon by the river, and Art Chaffin put the ferry in at Hite. I remember when they were working on the road I used to go down and camp with my dad. Hubby Shumway, or Glen, as he is more generally known now, used to go down with us and we would get in Fry Canyon on a sand bar and with pitchforks fork those catfish out of there and have a big catfish fry. Art Chaffin used to row across the river and pick us up and take us over to his farm. He raised dates and figs and the best watermelons you ever tasted. Those are some of the things I remember in my teens. I think I was about 15 or 16. 242 County Roads and Resources Then I would hear my dad and Lynn Lyman and the other old-timers talk about how someday we would have a road across there. It was always kind of a dream. That was very important if you wanted to go to St. George or Cedar City. When I was pretty young our family would get in the pickup and of course I would sit in the back. We would carry a grub box and bedrolls and we went to Cedar City to visit my grandmother who was over there with her sister. We picked her up. I do not even remember where we went but it seemed like it took forever. To get there you had to go to Thistle and then back down. You could go down through Emery County and across Salina, but that was a dirt road kind of like what we had here. There were still stretches of dirt road between here and Moab. The other alternative: we could go to Cortez, down to Gallup, and across from Winslow, Holbrook, and Flagstaff and up across the Kaibab. If you were lucky you could get down across the reservation, but you never knew when you would make it. I remember the bad winter of 1948. My truck was stranded in Monticello, so we decided to go to St. George. It took us a couple of days. We got stuck up Price Canyon and we had all kinds of trouble. We decided we were not going to go back that way, that we would come back through the reservation. Actually, at first we were going to Flagstaff but the radio said with the blizzards the roads were closed, so we decided to come up through the reservation. We got up to about Cow Springs and that road was just a ditch. It was drifted full of snow and we got stuck. So we turned around and headed the other way. We met the mail truck, and the driver said, "Oh you can make it. I'm going to Kayenta; follow me in and if you have trouble I'll hook the chain on." So we did, but pretty soon he could not pull us even with chains on his duals. So we just left the car there and we got in the back of that truck with the rest of the Navajos. We got into Kayenta, Arizona, about 8 or 9 o'clock that night and we were there for ten days. There were no phones so we could not let anyone know where we were. 243 San Juan County When I got home my grandmother had passed away and I had not known about it. Roads to me were very important, and I kept thinking about what these guys were saying, that someday we would have a road. After I started prospecting and saw how rough that country was, it just did not ever seem possible - building a road. I remember when they dedicated U-95, I think I was a junior in high school. Governor Maw, Bishop Rogers, and all the dignitaries were down there with the band from Loa and the high school band from Blanding. Some of the people were talking about maybe someday we would have diat road paved. Somebody said maybe before 20 years and I thought, "Oh, impossible," and that was in 1946. We dedicated U-95; finally had it finished and paved in 1976. It was called the Bicentennial Highway, and it had been 30 years! So again, I really had an early exposure to the roads and the needs. I carried that with me driving over a lot of those roads and trying to make a living first hauling uranium and then going into the mining business. The way I got started is that I had a truck and I ran out of an ore haul. I had to have something to haul so Hubby Shumway and I went together and got a jackhammer, compressor, and a wheelbarrow. That is all you had to have then. You did not have to register with the Mining Safety Health Administration or get permits. I hate to think of anybody starting out from the very bottom like we did then. But I became even more aware of the need for roads. My next real experience with roads and that dream uiat I had remembered some of the older people talking about - my dad, Lynn, and many other people - was back when I was in the service in the mid-'50s. I had never been on a boat in all my life. The first airplane I had ever been on I was 25, just before I went in the service. I drove a jeep from here down to Oljato to meet some people that I was involved wim from Salt Lake to look at some drilling. They flew in in a Beachcraft from Salt Lake and left there at 7:30 and got in Oljato at 9:00 in the morning. I left Blanding at 4:00 in the 244 County Roads and Resources morning to get to Oljato at 9:00 to meet them. That guy had to go back to Moab after some parts and he asked if I wanted to go with him and I said, "Sure, I've never been in an airplane in my life." So we took off, and 40 minutes from the time we had taken off we were in Moab. When I saw that country from the air for the first time, it did not look as big and formidable as it had. Then I went into the service, and we lived in New Jersey. When I was going to school at Fort Monmouth, we used to go into New York City. The only high walls I had ever seen before were these rocks in the canyons. To go back there and see those buildings was quite a different experience. We would go into New York on weekends. Somebody suggested we take the Staten Island ferry. So we did and that is the first time I had ever been on any kind of a boat except the old rafts we used to nail together and float on dirt ponds outside of town. I thought that was wonderful. That was after the time that the Upper Colorado River Project had been authorized. I was reading in the paper, I do not remember what year it was now, something about a group - Lynn Lyman, Joe Lyman, and Lorin Hawkins, and I do not know who else - went out the old road to Halls Crossing. We knew Lake Powell was going to be there, and I think those fellows went out there to see if there was a possibility of getting a road through that country, along the old Mormon trail. I started thinking about that and for the first time I really believed that it might be feasible, that there would indeed be roads across southern Utah. I felt there ought to be a ferry across there, kind of like the Staten Island ferry rather then two dead-end roads. So that was kind of in the back of my mind. I returned home from the service and became a little bit interested in the political system. Our assessed valuation was up and in my opinion we were making a mistake by lowering our mill levies instead of using the revenue while we had it to develop some of the basic resources such as transportation and roads, agriculture, tourism, and many of the other potentials we have. We were still a county whose state roads were 245 San Juan County Goosenecks of the San Juan River, 1979- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, © 1983- dirt roads or gravel even though at that time we had been carrying a mill levy of about 16 mills for county purposes. When we were poor we only had $3.8 million in assessed valuation and 16 mills brought in only about $50,000. Then we had a $132.8 million assessed valuation and we dropped the mill levy, because of pressure from the oil and mining companies, to 2.95 mills. I thought, "My land! We ought to maintain that mill levy. If we could pay it when we were poor we can certainly pay it for a few years, and we would have had an extra million and a half dollars." A million and a half dollars would have done a lot to get in some roads. 246 County Roads and Resources We have Natural Bridges, Hovenweep, the Goosenecks; we have a lot of scenic attractions that we talk about. Lynn Lyman would take people; Frank Wright would take people; but I will tell you it was extremely hard to get there. So we started really working on some roads, and I got interested and involved in the political system for those reasons, to develop those resources. I do not want to appear in any way vain and I hope you will not take it that way. The goals and the things that I have felt strongly about were getting some paved roads in the county. Those goals were of course getting Utah Highway 95 and getting a road from Bluff to Mexican Water and getting a road from Bluff to Montezuma Creek. We really goofed up in that in the late '50s when we were so tunnel-visioned in Blanding and Monticello and the county that we literally prohibited the road coming from Cortez through McElmo, Bluff, Mexican Hat, and Monument Valley as part of the Navajo Trail. In fact, we made sure that we were not even going to build a-road to the oil field that would facilitate the road at the time. That is the reason we went to the bottom of White Mesa and across that drainage and back up on the MacCraken and then parallel to the road that went from the bottom of White Mesa to Bluff, having to drop off that hill and cover about twice as many miles as if we had gone from Bluff to Montezuma Creek. The reason that we did not want that road was because we were afraid that road was going to "bypass" Blanding and Monticello. On September 8, 1958, I believe it was, we got the governor of the state, Governor Clyde, and the road commission down here at a public meeting. In the meantime Colorado had already put the road down to McElmo to the state line on their state system and they were ready to construct it. We got our governor and our road commission to make a public promise and take official action that they would not meet Colorado at the state line with an oiled road. Immediately the Navajo Trail Association forgot that segment, and that is the reason that U.S. 160, now the Navajo Trail, skirts just around Utah and goes south of us. 247 San Juan County That road today carries two and a half times the traffic in the summer months of even Interstate 70. I felt that was a mistake at the time. That was another reason for my interest. But in order to develop our road system it had to be county and state. We needed U-95; we needed the road from Bluff to Mexican Water as part of the north-south main highway. Now we have a new U.S. number for the highway. We got the number a year ago and it covers the road from Malta, Montana, to Chambers, Arizona. It will develop into a major north-south highway for the national parks, monuments, forest areas, recreation areas, and all the mineral and energy resources in the area connecting with that single numbered highway. That was an important goal. The road from Montezuma Creek to Red Mesa is an important road. The road from Bluff to Montezuma Creek, the one we should have had 30 years ago, is now in process. We are working on the road from Aneth to Ismay as part of that route. The county has just recently completed some more of the road across Cahone Mesa that provides not only school bus needs for children to get them to school but an access to Hovenweep National Monument and another direct link into the Cortez area. Those were parts of the road system that we felt were important for the overall transportation system. I took a lot of flak because of the Halls Crossing road because I had a personal interest out there. But we got that road built for a very low amount of county money, and in the deal we got the state to take it over as a state road. It has not cost the county anything since it came on die state system. If we would have ignored it and left it, the road would have cost die county much more. It was costing the county every day and every month because we had the responsibility of maintaining it, and as more people drove on it the costs increased. In getting that road built, and giving it to the state, we have spent less money at this point than we would if we had done nothing. The road into Canyonlands was another county road. We made a deal on a cooperative agreement and helped to have 248 County Roads and Resources the road upgraded to a paved surface; then we gave it to the state. The road from Bluff to Mexican Water is now a state highway. So we're getting rid of some county roads that always have been functional as state roads. The county had the maintenance responsibility for the road to the Natural Bridges National Monument. We got rid of that and the road to Goosenecks State Park which was a county road. We had the only area in the state where roads to state parks or national parks and monuments were county roads. So we got the state to take them from us too. We are going to get them to take Hovenweep, and we are going to give them Montezuma Creek to Red Mesa; they are already aware of that. It just takes a little time. But U-95 really got going when Joe Lyman was the president of the chamber of commerce and called a meeting. He got officials from southern Utah counties together and mayors of the cities. They all had their priorities but they all agreed that U-95 was the first priority. They got the funding started in 1964 with the bridges, and it was finally completed in 1976. There are roads outside of our area we were involved in planning with the other southern Utah areas, like the Boulder Grove road which is a connection with our network. It is one of the most beautiful drives in the whole state of Utah. One of the things that makes it so beautiful is that it goes up to about 10,000 feet and you can see most of our county; that is where the beauty is. We have some concrete plans now going to get a ferry established between Halls Crossing and Bullfrog to connect with the Burr Trail on the other side of the lake. That will open up all kinds of opportunities and potential there; including the possibility of a community area adjacent to Halls Crossing. We are working on the mechanics of that potential and also in agriculture. There could be about four thousand acres of irrigated farmland. Waters rise in the lake to within about three hundred feet, and Utah and San Juan County still have some unused water rights. It has the potential for a combination resort and agriculture community. I doubt if we 249 San Juan County "Big Indian," Monument Valley, 1983- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, © 1983- "Bear and Rabbit" and "Castle Rock," Monument Valley, 1983- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, © 1983. 250 County Roads and Resources Monument Valley, west edge of Sentinal Mesa, from left to right: "Stagecoach," "Bear and Rabbit," "Castle Rock," and "Big Indian," 1983- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, © 1983- ever had more than 4,000 acres of adequately irrigated land in the whole county. We did get some highway numbers. Not very many years ago we had no U.S. numbered highways south of Monticello. We now have U.S. 191 and U.S. 163, an alternate that will only go from Kayenta to the junction west of Bluff. But we have some ideas for the future. When we get the Bluff-to- Montezuma Creek road and the Aneth-to-Ismay road we hope to extend that number into Colorado, possibly to Telluride. Now to reservations. Back until the late '60s we did not accept or assume any responsibility for building or maintaining the roads on the reservations. When we started moving in that direction we had some problems. There were people in our county that did not know whether we should because that was really considered to be the Bureau of Indian Affairs responsibility. But there had been an attorney general's ruling in 1951 that counties and the state had the same responsibili- 251 San Juan County ties to provide services and benefits for the Indian people as they did any other citizens. That is when they really started going to public schools. So all of a sudden we had the responsibility of educating these Indian children in the public schools. They could not get to school. All of the roads were dirt roads, and on the reservation they had never been maintained. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had virtually ignored the Utah part of the reservation. Those people were ignored by everyone. The interesting thing is that when our assessed valuation went from $3.8 million to $132.8 million it was due almost entirely to oil and uranium. A lot of the uranium was produced on the reservation, and even though it was on die reservation it had the same formula for a tax base as it did off the reservation. The oil was virtually all on the reservation. So about 90 percent of our tax revenue, with which we were building libraries, recreation facilities, schools, and other amenities, were paid for with production of resources from the reservation. As far as I was concerned it was inconsistent. We should have spent monies to provide those same services, and in order to get those kids to school we had to. We still have a couple hundred miles of roads that are used as school bus roads but are dirt-covered trails. We have made some progress. We now have about 500 miles of roads on the reservation. We had a problem of legality, from the state point of view, of spending B and C tax money on those roads unless they are controlled by the county. The minute we tried to get some jurisdictional authority, we were suspect to the Navajo tribe and their attorneys who thought we were trying to get something. Lynn Mitten, attorney for the tribe at that time, could not believe that San Juan County wanted to maintain and start improving those roads for anything but an ulterior motive. When we went down to try and get the legal work, he said, "What are you guys trying to pull on us?" He just simply could not believe that it was part of the services we were trying to provide to all areas of the county. 252 County Roads and Resources At any rate we have those roads and we have made a great deal of progress. Some of the roads I have talked about across the reservation are terminal roads to help bring those kids in so diose people can get an education and training so they can really be productive and get off the welfare system. Gary Shumway made the statement one time that Blanding is the only place in the world where we love the Lamanites and hate the Indians. Sometimes in the past I think we have only given lip service because we were not willing to give them a real opportunity. When I first came into the commission we had never had and still did not have one Indian employee. I think we had the idea that they could not do anything. From my mining experience on the reservation I have known some really good people. Dan Black, an Indian who was killed at the bridge at Mexican Hat in 1958, was one of the smartest people I ever met. He could not speak much English but he could run anything and fix it. We got a program started with roads on the reservation. We had some old equipment that I was trying to get rid of to upgrade our county equipment and make it more efficient. We had a program come into the county for some of these Navajo people that wanted to work, that were on welfare. The only thing they lacked was communication skills and training skills. We gave them the best of the old equipment and got a supervisor, Teek Lyman, to train them to be qualified operators. With this old equipment they even learned to be mechanics. Today we have some Navajo Indian employees that have been with the county about 15 years. It is really a success. Those guys are some of the most skilled equipment operators in the whole state. They are all good. Take for example, Jimmy Grant. If he is not the best motor grader operator in the state of Utah, he is second. He is an artist. Those guys have pride in their skill and pride in accomplishment, and as far as their job responsibility and being on the job and not taking sick leave and not drinking, their average is as good as our Anglo average. 253 San Juan County We have over 2,000 miles of county roads. A lot of those that I have not mentioned we have oiled. We oiled the Monument Valley-to-Oljato road which was a major school bus road. Until that new school is built there those kids are riding the bus up to 80 and 90 miles each way each day. At least most of the roads were oiled. We oiled miles of road out on Douglas Mesa. We have improved the roads along the Monument Valley-Tuba City route. We have improved the roads across from the Red Mesa to the Bluff-Mexican Hat road. A lot of the roads go from north to south to the river. They are still scattered, but we have made a lot of progress in improving those roads. Now our funding for our roads comes from the state in what they call B and C money, C money going to cities and B money to counties. That money is allocated to the county on a formula from the revenue when we buy a license plate and pay registration. That revenue is collected statewide and allocated back to the counties and cities on a formula. If we have a collector road we get a portion from the gas tax. We finally got that all combined. We get an allocation of federal money that we have to match. We built the bridge at Hatch with what they call SOS money which meant Safety Off-road System. We built a new bridge at Verdure Creek with what they call bridge replacement money, and we are working to get that kind of funding on Montezuma Creek. The problem that we have had is that if there has never been a bridge it is not considered inadequate. At some of me national meetings I asked, "How, if you never had the money to build an inadequate bridge, is that more or less inadequate than a nonexistent bridge?" I never really got an answer to that part of the rules. We have made an effort since 1967, a major effort, using your tax dollars to fund a very accelerated growth program. We spent capital improvement funds on some of these roads that should have been state roads, but the state would not pay for them unless we had a system. We have put in about a million dollars, and we have built about 14 million dollars 254 County Roads and Resources of roads that are now state roads. We got 14 to 1 with that money. Those roads were built because the state had a greater need and a greater priority for them. Instead of the Bureau of Indian Affairs spending a little money and running a grader in our area once in a while, we have entered into a contract with them where they pay San Juan County and we do the maintenance, so we get a little extra revenue from them. We have an arrangement with the Utah Division of Indian Affairs where, in order to accelerate the development and improvement of those roads on the reservation beyond what the county can do by itself, if they recommend and approve a project, they pay 25 percent of the total cost of that project; that is another reason we have been able to accelerate the improvement and development of some of these roads. The Navajo people are very desirous of a road connecting Navajo Mountain with Oljato and Monument Valley. It is a formidable task, but the only way we can get it is to plan it. It may take a while, but it is a desirable goal. We still have dreams of the old highway system in Canyonlands National Park to be developed as it was promised when they created the park. The plans included a loop road through the area back to Beef Basin, back across Salt Creek, back across Elk Ridge and what we call the Kigalia scenic way, and a connection with the causeway and down into Blanding. We still have a dream of improvement of the roads up over the mountain for a nice summer drive between here and Monticello and a connection from Monticello Lake intersecting the Canyon-lands Road down by Indian Creek so we could have a better access from the San Juan County area instead of all the benefits going to Moab. The Park Service failure and reneging on their promises to develop the park the way they originally planned has deferred that, but I have met with Secretary Watt a couple of times and we are hopeful that we will get some changes in that. The nature of the assessed valuation on our resources is very dangerous. It goes up and down like a yo-yo. Right now the assessed valuation for all of our homes, farms, ranches, 255 San Juan County private lands, automobiles, livestock, machinery, and equipment - virtually everything real and stable that will be here even if the oil wells and uranium mines are closed - is only 15 million dollars. The total revenue in our mill levies would be about $320,000 or $330,000. We spend over a million dollars a year just on the roads. With this special funding we will spend $3 million on the Bluff-Mexican Hat road, but we have been saving up, and the Utah Division of Indian Affairs is furnishing three quarters of a million, but that still will not build the entire road. They are very expensive. The problem is maintaining what we have - recreation, schools, medical facilities, and roads - when the revenue from the oil and gas properties drops. Because of that we drafted legislation and persuaded the state legislature to pass a law entitled the Tax Stability and Trust Fund Act. The purpose of this law is to allow counties to maintain their mill levy at the normal rate when assessed values increase dramatically during the production of nonrenewable resources and to place such extra revenue into a permanent trust fund so when the assessed value declines interest earned from the trust fund will enable the county to continue to support facilities and services that were built during the impact of the growth. If we had had the legal authority and foresight to have implemented a tax stability and trust fund program in 1956, the county would have a much lower mill levy now and in the future. San Juan County has adopted a program for such a trust fund which presently has about two million dollars. We had hoped to build a greater fund before our assessed value again tumbles, but it looks like our tax base will fall by about $40 million in 1983 from the 1982 level of $215 million. The wealth is the land. There is no other source of wealth except the land. I think sometimes in our nation, especially in the urban areas in the East and maybe even some of our urban areas in the West, there are people who are one or two generations away from the land. They have forgotten, if they ever knew, where wealth comes from. I was to a meeting not long ago and Secretary of Interior Watt 256 County Roads and Resources talked about this very issue. He said, "Contrary to many of the Liberals in the East that think wealth is in banks and offices and in things like that - it is not. The wealth that comes from the land - raw material, resources, food, fiber, minerals, and energy - are the only things that make those offices and the wealth in those banks possible." We never should lose track of that. The only way we develop that wealth is with the intelligence and the planning of human beings, tools, and resources to make those things into usable items for people. That is really part of the standard or the quality of life. We have become so accustomed to the material things we enjoy and take for granted that we sometimes think that wealth is bad. I recently completed a series of meetings as a member of the National Bureau of Land Management Advisory Council. Some of the very issues we talk about are whether we River running through Piute Farm Rapids on the San Juan River before Lake Powell was formed. USHS Collections. 257 San Juan County lock up a lot of land or whether we maintain a balance and utilize some of the resources of those lands. There is a need for a balance. Certainly we do not want to destroy our lands, but we have got to maintain the utilization of these resources. Transportation and water are the key elements. Human beings cannot live without water and they cannot live without food and they cannot live without fiber. Energy and technology make those things more available and make life easier. We also must have the ability to pay for them; we need jobs and businesses. Most of the roads in our area were built as the result of a basic need. We have a beautiful country. It is a treasure of scenic wonders and minerals, of agricultural, recreational, historical, archaeological, and cultural resources. It is up to us to look ahead and plan for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren with the wisdom to balance the options and preserve our heritage and our ability to survive. 258 |
