The Black Canyon Highway: Highway to history, 1863-1948

The Black Canyon Highway is a historical landscape that illustrates community development of the state of Arizona. The highway, a human transportation corridor for centuries, reveals to historians how geography and climate can define settlement patterns, trade routes, economic competition, and human adaptation to the land. This study covers the period from 1863 to 1948 represents the time period before the Black Canyon Highway was paved and rerouted from its territorial roadbed. This investigation focuses on three main topics: the development and evolution of the highway and its importance to territorial and state history as well as its region; the genesis of communities and economies which evolved and depended on the highway; and, the people of the communities along the highway and their significance to the history of the region.;The archives, collections, and map libraries at Hayden Library, Arizona Collection, Arizona Historical Foundation, Noble Library, Sharlott Hall Museum in Prescott, University of Arizona Special Collections, Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, the Arizona State Library and Archives, the Arizona State Mining and Mineral Museum in Phoenix, Arizona Room, Phoenix Library Main Branch, and Department of Transportation archives have been consulted in the researching and writing of this project. In addition, personal interviews conducted as a freelance journalist while under contract to Arizona Highways were reviewed as additional primary sources on the subject since much of the collective history of the highway is unwritten, personal memory. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).