State Road 10 is Located!
Engineer Bowlby and Commercial Club Decide on Colockum Road.
The Wenatchee World
October 1, 1910

The state road from Wenatchee to Ellensburg has been definitely located. The Colockum route has been officially approved by Commissioner Bowlby and accepted by the Wenatchee Commercial Club committee. Last Sunday State Highway Commissioner Bowlby was present in Wenatchee and met with the Commercial Club committee. The arguments presented at the recent meeting of the Commercial Club were rehearsed to the state official.

However, he had gone over the matter very thoroughly, prior to his coming to Wenatchee, with his assistant, F. H. Copp. The engineer has spent several weeks riding on horseback over all the suggested routes and his report to the superior official was very exhaustive. Mr. Bowlby was able to convince the committee that the Colockum route is the superior in all respects to every other. Following the action of the Commercial Club to accept the Colockum route only as a last resort, the committee was forced to take action or lose the consummation of the project at this time.

Engineer Copp arrived in the city today and will go to Ellensburg tomorrow to assume active supervision of the work. A corps of twelve surveyors has been at work at the summit between here and Ellensburg since Sept. 10th. Their camp is located two miles the other side of the summit. The preliminary survey is now complete for a distance of six miles extending from the summit toward Ellensburg. The permanent survey is now finished four miles from the summit toward Wenatchee.

Engineer Copp stated to the Daily World reporter this afternoon that the permanent survey from the summit to Wenatchee would be completed by Thanksgiving, and that the survey for the entire route from Wenatchee to Ellensburg will be completed by December 1st. Mr. Copp was asked how the communications of the Commercial Club committee were received in the office of the state highway commissioner regarding the protest against the selection of the Colockum route. He was reminded that Mr. Bowlby had approved the Monitor route.

"Mr. Bowlby is a very busy man and is compelled for that reason to press upon his subordinates the detail work. I had spent weeks horseback riding over the hills and the complete report of my findings caused Mr. Bowlby to agree with me that the Colockum route is the only feasible one. As a matter of fact, the main objection to the selection of the Colockum route, when reduced to its last analysis, was simply the desire of one member of the Commercial Club committee to locate the route where it would give the greatest benefit to his land holdings.

The vote of this one man was the only dissenting voice in the meeting Sunday, to the recommendation of Mr. Bowlby to fix upon the Colockum route. "Practically the only objection to the Colockum survey was that some time or other a bridge might be built across the Columbia seventeen or twenty miles below here. Some imaginary persons think that if such an improbable thing happens, traffic from Seattle to Spokane would not pass through Wenatchee- Now, of all the far-fetched notions I have ever heard, this is the limit.

Let us look ahead two years when this road is completed. Suppose we are asking automobilists, horseback riders and those driving vehicles, where their destination is, I prophesy that ninety-nine out of every hundred are traveling from Wenatchee to Ellensburg or Intermediate points. Not more than one in a hundred will be making a through trip from Seattle to Spokane or vice versa. It is safe to say that in these special cases the tourists will be more than glad to stop in the only large city between the distant points."