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But the committee will give very careful consideration to your recommendation, to your request, and to the bill to be introduced by Senator Millikin and other Senators.

Governor JOHNSON. We are very grateful to the committee. I am most grateful to you for listening to me and being so patient with me. I greatly appreciate the assurances that you have given that you are going to thoroughly investigate this whole matter.

Senator GORE. Senator Millikin?

STATEMENT OF HON. EUGENE D. MILLIKIN, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

Senator MILLIKIN. Mr. Chairman, I think Senator Johnson has stated in very fine language why we have to have an express road through Colorado. I think when you study the map and study the history of this thing you will find that there is an antimountain complex which may bother people not accustomed to the mountains but which does not at all bother people who are accustomed to the mountains.

Senator GORE. You have never been afflicted with that.

Senator MILLIKIN. I have never been afflicted with an antimountain complex.

Mr. Chairman, take the city of Denver. When we started out in that country everything went around the mountains. They were scared of the mountains. To overcome that we ran a railroad across the top of the Continental Divide.

As time went on we ran through the mountains with a railroad, we ran through the mountains to get water from the western slope to the eastern slope. It is nothing new or strange to us at all. Instead of saying, "Oh, my goodness, these are the mountains, we have to make a detour," we went through the mountains. That is what I am suggesting in this case.

We cannot have a direct transcontinental highway from the East to the West if we are going to get scared of the mountains and stop short of them and start running detours.

Senator Johnson has told you that the Colorado Legislature has already authorized a tunnel through the Continental Divide. That is something that does not strike us as strange at all. It may paralyze with fear the engineers who have not worked on that part of the country, but it does not have that effect on the rest of us. It activates our determination to go ahead. We are accustomed to surmounting that obstacle.

When we settled Denver everybody said Denver would starve to death-it is not a port, it is not on a transcontinental railroad. But it became a great capital in the West because we overcame the difficulties which surrounded the country by doing what was necessary.

We ran railroads to the north of us, we ran railroads to the south of us, then we ran them through the mountains. We ran our water through the mountains.

I am merely suggesting that the engineers who laid out this project, who laid out the map which is before us, got scared of the mountains, when they do not need to be.

We can build a tunnel through those mountains. It will be a very fine way to get from one side to the other. I believe that this committee should be aware of that fact.

Take Senator Martin's State of Pennsylvania. Great Scot, if they did not use tunnels in Pennsylvania it would not be the great transportation center that it is. You do not sit around in a paralysis of fear because you come to a mountain. You run through the mountain. You have done it again and again, dozens of times.

I do not recall ever taking a trip through Pennsylvania that did not involve going through tunnels.

Senator MARTIN. Mr. Chairman, if the Senator would yield: The first suggestion of tunneling the mountains of Pennsylvania for a highway was made by an Irish emigrant who had succeeded in business in the United States and in politics, and became a Pennsylvania State senator. He said the way to do it is to tunnel through the mountains. The engineers said it is not practical, but we have them now. He is the man who suggested it. It was not an engineer.

Senator CASE. What is his name?

Senator MARTIN. Jimmy Coyne.

Senator MILLIKIN. That is the point that I am making here. Let's not stand in fear of the mountains which we have conquered again and again to serve our economic goals. Take water. We tunneled through the mountains to put the western slope water on the Big Thompson project.

We have other projects of that kind. Dave Moffat first ran a railroad over the top of the Continental Divide. He went busted doing it but he did it. Finally we built a tunnel under the Continental Divide to operate that railroad and it is operating very successfully. We have conquered the mountains to the extent that it is necessary. That is what I am proposing here. Let's have a straight route, not a detoured dead-end route.

Let's have a straight route from Colorado to Salt Lake City. Let's get that done. We do not fear it at all. It is a normal practice to us to surmount difficulties of that kind.

What I want to emphasize is that I do believe that someone—and I am not challenging anyone's ability or motives or anything elsethere are those who say it is impossible to run a transcontinental highway through those mountains. It is not impossible at all. Our legislature has authorized the doing of it. We intend to get that done.

We are not selecting particular routes here because we have the local questions that will have to be decided by local authorities. But to say that we have to circumvent, have to bypass the mountains and run what should be a straight chute into Salt Lake City or near there into a diversionary route of some kind, does not make good commonsense, I respectfully suggest.

I think if you will look at that map you will find, as it was pointed out here today, Colorado is given the least advantageous treatment so far as the east-west route is concerned in the transcontinental scheme, and there is no reason for it.

As Senator Johnson has pointed out, we send about $700 million here every year in income taxes, which is a good record for States in that part of the country. We hold up our own end, and we do not want to be discriminated against, we do not want to be regarded as a second-class State. We are entitled to a straight chute through Colorado, through the mountains.

Give us the tunnel to do the business. Give us the opportunity which you are able to give us to get that done. We are asking for more efficient transcontinental systems, and that is the most efficient one.

I do not know of anything else that I should say. I hope that I can impart to you some of my own confidence, which is shared by the people who live out there, who have been accustomed to dealing with difficult problems from the very beginning. If they had been afraid, they would not have stayed there. They would have moved on to easier places, or stayed in easier places. People out there are not afraid of the challenges which a propostion of this kind presents.

Senator Johnson is Governor of the State. He himself has urged the passage of the tunnel authority bill and has received it. Out there we are proud of things of that kind. We will do what is necessary on our part. We ask this committee to do what is necessary on its part to enable us to accomplish this great highway, a through transcontinental highway, and not a meandering road. We want a road which goes straight from one place to another, which will save time, which is economically sound, which is sure to vitalize our industrial regions, which will move defense goods, when they have to be moved, without loss of time.

We welcome the challenge and we are proud of the accomplishment in meeting those challenges. We have met many of them and we will continue to do so.

Just looking at that map, if you take a look at it you will say there is something wrong here; every State in the Union, with one or two exceptions, has one or more opportunities for transcontinental roads. To look at a great and, I say respectfully, valuable area, which comes to a dead end because the mountains are in the offing, that does not make good sense to us. I am suggesting that you have had the same kind of experience in Pennsylvania, Senator.

Shivering people must have taken a look at your mountains and said, "We can't build roailroads here." But you have penetrated those mountains wherever necessary to build your roads, your highways and your railroads. We do the same thing in Colorado. We want to continue to be able to do it. We do not want to be on a side road. We do not want to be on a dead end. We are entitled to be on the straight chute direct route from Colorado to the western slope to Salt Lake City or near there. That is what we want to do.

I earnestly beseech this committee to give us your help. I thank you. Senator GORE. Thank you very much, Senator Millikin, for your appearance. The committee will give careful consideration to your request and your recommendation.

Senator Martin, do you have any questions?

Senator MARTIN. No.

Senator GORE. Senator Case?

Senator CASE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask one question, and that is with respect to the tunnel authority. Senator Millikin referred to a tunnel authority which Colorado is creating. Does that contemplate that the tunnel authority will have authority to construct a tunnel through the mountains somewhere for highway purposes? Senator MILLIKIN. That is right.

Senator CASE. How is the tunnel authority to finance its operations? Senator MILLIKIN. Governor Johnson, will you answer that?

Governor JOHNSON. Yes. The tunnel authority in Colorado is the Colorado Highway Department. The legislature authorized, as I said, $5 million a mile for 3 miles of tunnel-exactly $16 million-to

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build a tunnel. The tunnel will be a toll tunnel. The highway department of the State of Colorado is backing those bonds 100 percent so that they will sell for a very fine figure, probably at 2 percent or 21%, it is anticipated that the bonds will sell for to build the tunnel, and then it will be paid for by the motor vehicle users.

Senator CASE. The reference was of considerable interest to me, Governor, because of the fact that the bill which I introduced, S. 1573, I proposed that the Interstate Right-of-Way Corporation would have the authority to construct bridges and tunnels and to charge tolls on them. I assume that if the Colorado authority were to construct the tunnel that you would have no objection to an Interstate Highway coming to the portal of the tunnel and going through on that tunnel? Governor JOHNSON. No, indeed. That is one of the great purposes of the tunnel, and, of course, we will consult with the Bureau of Public Roads with respect to the location of the tunnel, with respect to the design of the tunnel, because we want the Federal Government to be entirely satisfied with the tunnel we build.

Senator ČASE. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that testimony because I think it is the first direct testimony we have had on the value of considering the toll approach to major structures like tunnels or bridges. I think it is an important contribution and I think it offers one key to solve the problem which confronts us.

Senator GORE. Senator Martin?

Senator MARTIN. Along that line I might say that it has been authorized to build a tunnel through what we call the River Hill, at Pittsburgh, which will be on the parkway system which runs down through Pittsburgh and is a part of the Pennsylvania highway system. It is a part of this Interstate System as far as that is concerned but it will be completed when that tunnel is. And it is contemplated that the Highway Department of Pennsylvania will charge tolls in order to liquidate the cost of that tunnel. I forget how much it is to cost, but it runs into several million dollars.

Maybe we can get some things of that kind started that will help do the financing. The financing of it is the great difficulty in our country right now. The Government is costing so much money that we have got to find as many self-liquidating projects as possible, like tunnels, bridges, roads, and so forth.

Senator GORE. Senator Allott, the committee will be pleased to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON ALLOTT, A UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

Senator ALLOTT. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to compliment Governor Johnson and Senator Millikin on their fine statements. I believe they have covered almost every phase of this matter. I would like to emphasize 1 or 2 points.

Much has been said about being afraid of the improvements. Just as a matter of personal reference and I am sure this could probably be confirmed by Mr. Charles Shumate, our assistant State highway engineer, who is in the room-I have, since World War II, averaged about 25,000 miles of driving to 35,000 miles of driving in Colorado each year.

In the 9 years since the last world war, I have never had a pair of chains on but once, and that was when I was going to a remote ski area in Colorado. Neither have I ever owned or had on my car a pair of these heavy-duty storm tires. So the problems in Colorado are not problems to us. They do not scare us. It is true that our improvements go high, but we go over them, and now we are going through them.

I would like to invite the committee's attention to just one thing with respect to western Colorado, and also Utah. The uranium area of that country is primarily developed now in what is known as the Four Corners area. That is the area which is common to Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

It extends all over the Colorado Plateau. These roads which have been commented on as access roads, I wouldn't want anyone here to think that they were roads in the sense of being usable highways; roads that are used by trucks carrying 8, 10, or 12 tons some people would hesitate to run their cars over. So in that sense only are they access highways.

This general country is one of the wealthiest parts now and potentially of the United States. Not only is there this huge uranium development, but there is also an estimated-and this has been estimated and reestimated-oil shale reserve in this same area of western Colorado which would be made available by such a road as is proposed by Governor Johnson and Senator Millikin, of 400 billion barrels of oil from the oil shale reserve.

I have been informed by reliable sources, chiefly the Colorado Yearbook, that there is in this area enough coal to last the United States 300 years.

I would also like to invite the committee's attention to the production of molybdenum in this area; the production of other elements, feldspar, zinc, lead, also gold and silver, which are prevalent in this area and which make it one of the great economic potentials of the United States.

Then I would like to shift again and emphasize two things which Governor Johnson and Senator Millikin have expressed so well.

First, it doesn't seem sensible to anyone who knows this country, this area of the country, from a national defense standpoint, to run Highway 6 and Highway 40 into Denver and stop the Interstate System. We have not only a great industrial development in Denver, and now even some in Colorado Springs, and the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. at Pueblo, which in the last few years has also added a seamless tube mill to it, but we also have the Geneva steel mills on the eastern-southern side of Salt Lake City, all of which should be connected, and connected by a straight and proper and good road in the Interstate Highway System.

I would like to close my statement by calling attention to the resolution clause of a resolution adopted by the State Highway Commission of the State of Colorado November 29 to December 1, 1954, being resolution 301-C. To save time I will read of that resolution only the resolution clause:

Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Commission requests the Colorado delegation to join in petitioning the Congress to amend the present law to extend the mileage limita

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