It looks like the dawning of a new day for Transylvania County, when we stop for a moment to consider what has been done very recently for the construction of good roads. Two quite definite results have sprung from the recent conferences with the State Highway Commission. One of these, recorded in the last week’s issue of this paper, is the letting of the contract to build a hard surfaced road to the Henderson County line, where it will be met with the same surfaced road. The other is the agreement by the State to maintain the road to Caesar’s head.
Starting on this assured basis, the county has great cause for congratulation. What it means in dollars and cents, in the increase of tourist travel and the growth of the county in population and taxable values it would be impossible at the present time to forecast. But that it is the beginning of a clear road to progress not many will be inclined to doubt.
To us of Transylvania there is a special significance. We are off the main line of railway and have suffered much in the past on account of our isolated position. In recent years we have been made to suffer still more from this isolation because we have had no good highways connecting us with the rest of the world. Tourists in automobiles passed us by, even when they knew that by Nature we possessed climate and scenery unsurpassed. The natural charms of our mountain and valley situation were like the flower “born to blush unseen” because people were riding in automobiles, and automobiles were shy of mud and rough roads.
For years the county rod commissioners have been struggling with this problem. At every step they met opposition. They were criticized for not attempting the impossible and then criticized for what they did attempt to do. But now they stand before us with very tangible results in their hands; for through them and by their intercession the great State of North Carolina agrees to do for one of her weaker counties what it could not do for itself, and to do this—not after other more favored sections had been attended to—but at once and among the very first. Let us give the credit where it is due. Hats off to the road commissioners!
From the editorial page of the Brevard News, Friday, May 6, 1921, W.E. Breese, owner; A.B. Riley, editor; and Wm. A. Band, publisher.
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