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Show TO BUILD flOH-MT. flOH-MT. GARMEL ROAD OGDEN, Aug. 2 Bids are to be opened in the office of the United State bureau of roads here August 18 for the construction of the first section sec-tion of the Zion Park-Mt. Carmel road, it is announced by District Engineer En-gineer B. J. Finch under authorization authoriza-tion of the national park service. This road is designed to be one of the outstanding highways in the world. The first contract will be for five miles of the highway leading from the present checking station at the entrance of Zion National park, for which the park service has provided $700,000. This contract contemplates four miles of heavy grading and one mile of tunnel through the south wall of Pine Creek canyon. It is expected one year will be required to build this five-mile stretch. The entire road between be-tween Zion park and the Grand Canyon Can-yon highway at Mount Carmel will be 25 miles in length. This will join the Zion park and Bryce canyon with excellent highway and much shorter distance. Of the remaining section three and one-half miles is in the national na-tional park and that will be built by funds provided by the national park service in 1928. This will leave 16 miles of the proposed road outside the national park to be built by the state with federal aid within the next 15 months. The cost of the Zion-Mt. Carmel road will be approximately $1,-650,000. $1,-650,000. Of this amount $350,000 is allotted to the state and federal aid work and $1,350,000 is within the national na-tional park. This project will be the largest contract which district number 12 of the bureau of public roads has ever let. and the road, in the opinion of Mi. Finch, will be the most difficult diffi-cult piece of road work anywhere in the world. A tunnel one mile long on an automobile highway is an exceptional ex-ceptional piece of work, Mr. Finch says. The tunnel will add to the wonders of the Utah parks, it is pointed out by the engineers who have surveyed the road and will not be entirely en-tirely underground, but will open at intervals. Underground portions will be electric lighted. Mr. Finch, accompanied accom-panied by H. K. Bishop, chief of the division of construction of the United States bureau of public roads, returned re-turned to Ogden last week from an inspection of the highways in the southern part of the state. Mr. Bishop was taken over the proposed Zion park-Mount Carmel road and believes it will be an easy matter so far as the construction is concerned. |