| OCR Text |
Show ! RSI BUS III UTAH URGED Million Dollars Is Spent in State by 1919 Travelers. Improvement of Highways Expected to Greatly Increase Profits. . BY W. D. KISHEL. The automobile tourist as a eotamer-cial eotamer-cial asset to the state of Utah is an interesting study. . It is believed that propaganda to' bring before tho public pub-lic the vital importance of tourist navel as a commercial asset is no longer necessary. That tourist travel should be encouraged is generally recognized, rec-ognized, and the big problem now is for all persons interested to get to-r.?ther to-r.?ther and cooperate so this business ran be developed in the way that Willi bring, the best results. In the past the exact value of the . tourists to the state, in dollars and cents, has teen mere guesswork. Through records kept this year nt the Utah State Automobile association office of-fice it is now possible to give exact figures upon which a fairly conservative conserva-tive estimate can te made of the monetary mon-etary value to the state. Records show the number of persons ariving in Utah over each of the main highways in each month throughout the year. These records rec-ords also show the number1 of days each person spent in the state. Register Kept. For the first teu months otlie year, or until November 1, the association rosristored .SriliS nersons for a total of 55,829 days. It is believed that four tourists have arrived in the state that missed Salt Lake or passed through Salt Lake witRout registering to every one who "isited the association offices of-fices at the Commercial club. These are conservative figures and give a total to-tal of 34.27H persons spending 223,iilo days in Utah. Now comes the question of the money spent by these tourists. To be conservative, let us place it at five dollars per day per person. Thi3 includes in-cludes the repairs on ears, new tires purchased, gasoline, oils, hotel' bill3 and all other expenditures. Five dollars dol-lars a day seems conservative, yet it mean3 that automobile tourists spent $l,llb',530 in Utah in the first ten months of 1919. The greatest single drawback to the tourist travel has been the poor roads' entering Utah. The chief reason why these roads have not been improved is the diversity of opinion as to where hard-surfaced highways should be located. lo-cated. This diversity of opinion is the result chiefly of ignorance. Energy Misdirected. Mny well meaning public-spirited men have given money and time to promoting pro-moting roads which are not of major importance. These mistakes have hin dered the completion of a system of highways which wu!d not only take care of the tourist travel, but from their strategical location would greatly increase it. The average citizen of Utah will he surprised to learn that the great bulk of California travel by automobile which crosses the middle section of the United States is to northern California and not southern California. Hero are the statistics: 5038 tourists arrived in Utah over northern California roads, the Lincoln highway and Pike's Peak route, and only 2108 arrived over the .Midland trail and Arrowhead trail from southern California. Yet, during the past ten months, the Los Angeles road3 have been far bet-tei bet-tei than the San Francisco roads, or the difference would have been mueh greater in favor of northern California. This is easy to explain. AVe find that seventy-three per cent of all travel through Utah is during July, August and September. This travel is towards northern California. We must not overlook the presumption that this will also always be the case, because winter win-ter travel cannot cross the Xockies into Utah on account of the snow, nnd therefore Utah must eater to the summer sum-mer travel. ' Careful Selection Urged. The California instance is mentioned merely as one of the reasons why tourist tour-ist routes in and out of Utah should be built from a strategical point of view. There is a network of main j highways entering Utah. It is not pos- i Bible to improve all at once, but in tifnc all should be completed. The first highways improved should be Ihose upon which there is the greatest present demand and those which are likelv to divert the greatest number of tourists into the state. A study of the, records showing the demand upon the roads at the present , should first be made in order to as certain the natural flow of touring travel. Tlion the present condition Ox io: roads, wlii'ih greatly Influence the i resent day travel, should be considered consid-ered in making the selection for first improvement! on our main interstate bigttwayi. Now is tire time to correct past mistakes mis-takes and get busy to improve, first ttfl roads leading info Utah, which the greatest number of tourists demand and which will, therefore, deliver the greatest number of tourists to I'tah. |
