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Show NATIONAL EDITORIAL Js I I as'socTatl'qn 'jf 7J -V-fv Juj:t..r,iJ-TjH WA $IATTlRBini$$0CIATI0H hy.li" ifiTnliliiwiiiHiii Hiil THE BASIN NEEDS BETTER HIGHWAYS Everyone living in the Great Uintah Basin ' recognizes the need for better roads. There is no other area in the State of Utah-with the great natural resource potential that Uintah Basin possesses which is so isolated without access to a railroad. We must depend entirely on our" highways to transport products in and out of the Basin. During the 1953 session of the state legislature a joint senate and house resolution was prepared and approved that called upon the state of Utah to build bigger and better roads into the Uintah Basin. The resolution pointed out that this inland in-land empire contained untold wealth in minerals, oils and timber, as well as being a livestock and dairy center, that the nearest railroad is 125 miles away and that the only means of transportation trans-portation is by trucks. , The state has responded well the past few year in building and rebuilding some of our roads. We are all appreciative of what has been done- Additional improvements are being considered con-sidered for the future. For a number of years, or since 1944, the Federal Government Govern-ment has been making plans toward 40,000 miles of interstate highways. Such a project received recent approval of the congress cong-ress of the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. No definite time has been established for starting this tremendous tremend-ous program. There is still much to be done from an engineering engineer-ing standpoint, as well as making permanent designations as to where certain roads will be built. In the plan of the national system of interstate highways will be the designation of a route- that will connect Denver and Salt Lake City- At present state and federal officials from both Utah and Colorado are being pressured to designate Highway 50-6, which comes from Denver via Grand Junction and Carbon county. The other route being considered is Highway 40 our highway. There have been several delegations from Uintah County, Duchesne City and Duchesne County meet with the powers that be in our state, urging the designation of Highway 40, which has been proven to be the most logical route from the standpoint stand-point of distance and engineering. To date Roosevelt City1 has not joined any of these delegations. We are not sure just why this hasn't been done, but it perhaps is because someone hasn't taken the initiative to get us organized. In the opinion of this newspaper no community in the Untah Basin, or any of its people can logically and consistently oppose the building of a super-highway through this area. It will probably be several years before actual construction begins, be-gins, but now is the time when we must unite together to get Highway 40 designated as the route for a super highway that will link two great states, Utah and Colorado, closer together. We all must agree that the Uintah Basin faces its greatest development era since it was opened for white settlement fifty years ago. The coming development of the Upper Colorado River which will see the great Flaming Gorge damsite built, and the initial phase of the Central Utah project completed n the next few years, should be reason enough to convince us that we need a super highway built into the Uintah Basin. The eyes of the country are again being turned toward our Basin communities, and according to predictions by the Bureau of Reclamation, the next twenty years should see our population nearly doubled. Thus we must have better roads as well as other facilities that will attract people to our communities. We must not be like the foolish virgins we read about in the Bible, whose lamps were not filled with oil when their Saviour came. Our greatest challenge of the times is to be t ready to meet the promised growth and expansion when it comes, and unity is the answer. t WELL, WHAT ABOUT THE HEAT? Do you ever moan, "This heat is killing me? Well, it can and so can cold! Excessive heat and cold killed 1,208 persons in the- United States in 1954- Excessive heat was responsible for 978 of the deaths, excessive cold for 230. Hunger, thirst and exposure killed 238 other persons, according ac-cording to "Accident Facts," the National Safety Council's statistical sta-tistical yearbook, which is just off the press. The 1954 figures are the latest available. 30 |