Adams County Makes the News - Council Leader #11

The Council Leader
Published Every Thursday by the Council Publishing Company
Fred Mullin, Editor

August 22, 1912
FIX THE ROADS

Frank Richardson returned yesterday from a wagon trip to Long Valley and says the road on the Mail Cabin hill in the Weiser canyon is almost impassable. We understand there is a contract overseer in that district. Why doesn’t he fix the road so a man can get over it with an ordinary load? We are informed that the bad road is caused by water which might easily be diverted into some other channel.


January 2, 1914
ROAD PROVERBS

If you want to know if good roads are a good thing, ask a horse.

Good roads promote prosperity; bad roads provoke profanity.

If the roads around a town are bad, it might as well be on an island.

In considering roads, remember that there are few towns that look so good to the farmer
that he will kill a horse to get there.

Ill fares the town, to hastening ills a prey, when teams turn out to go some better way.

Was it in your district that the ignoramus pulled the sod into the middle of the road and
then quit?

Good roads will increase health, happiness, education, religion and morality.

Good roads will decrease profanity, discouragement, back taxes, sheriff sales, sour grapes
and grouches.

Good roads invoke a blessing upon any people who build them.

Good roads will keep people in the country, and will bring the city folks out for fresh air.

Good roads do not build themselves, they must have help. If all pull together, good roads
are easily attained.

April 25, 1912
MAKE YOUR ROADS GOOD

A representative of the Leader had the pleasure of riding over some of Council valley’s fine (?) roads last Saturday and Sunday. Now is the time to work on the roads. Supposing some of you farmers hold a conference some day or evening and decide on some certain day for everybody to turn out with horses, mules, plows, scrapers, shovels, picks and your wives, too, if you can make them shovel gravel. If not, let them stay at home and make a cream cake for supper. They will do it, too, as a buggy ride over a good road will be worth a cream cake.

Laying all jokes aside, now, would you regret spending one day with a team on the road with your neighborhood? A dozen teams can put a very poor road in fine shape any day. Just try it and see if we are not right.

April 17, 1914
WHY HAMPER PROGRESS?

How does it sound to say that we have a platted town site within ten miles of the county seat of Adams county, where three other ranchers are shut off from the outside world for eight months of the year just for the want of about two paltry miles of wagon road? The town referred to is Starkey Hot Springs, the only resort in this county, and yet the county commissioners refuse to build this short piece of road. Is it any wonder the state is adopting and encouraging a system for building good roads? When a board of county commissioners holds people to the primitive mode of traveling, by pack mule, we deem it time the state was taking a hand to further the adoption of progressive road building systems.

Yours for progress,
Ivan M. Durrell [ed. note: Durrell was the previous Leader editor]

March 12, 1915
WORKING FOR A ROAD TO TIMBER

Attorney L.L. Burtenshaw and Forest Ranger Thos. Evans have started a movement to improve parts and build other parts of what is known as the Mill Creek road or Long Valley cut-off or East Fork Road. This is the only public road in this part of the country that leads directly to the heart of the government timber on the east mountains, and would give a short outlet for our fruit into Long Valley. These two items are of inestimable value to both ranchers and town people. The town people can get all the dead stuff they want for firewood and the ranchers can get the same, in addition to a certain amount of green timber.

The road will be a little expensive building, but the promoters are assured that the government will lend a liberal hand in the project and they feel sure that when the county commissioners are shown the advantages and necessity of this road, that body will make a reasonable appropriation. Then, besides these aids, private subscriptions will be necessary, either in cash or labor.

compiled by Eberle Umbach