San Juan County Roads and Resources Calvin Black
Originally when people came here, they came to settle under the instructions of Brigham Young. They had to have roads and access and resources to survive. As people developed resources, for example gold mining along the Colorado River, they had to have access. The uranium, die oil, and other things have also demanded a need for access and they have created our ability to pay. Let me give you an example. In the early 1950s and up to the middle 1950s the total assessed valuation of San Juan County was 3.8 million dollars. We were one of the poorest counties in the state of Utah, the largest and the poorest school district in the state. The revenue from that assessed valuation — the maximum levy that counties could collect — brought in less than $50,000. By I960, with the development of uranium ore, oil, and gas, die assessed valuation had gone from 3.8 million to 132 million. We were, at that point in time, the second wealthiest county on a tax base in the state of Utah. We did not stay there too long because the assessed valuation of the wealth from uranium, oil, and gas is dependent on the production of that resource and in some cases on the profitable production. So we went back down, then we went back up, and now we are going back down. Again, that is a major part of resources. But getting back to the roads, I remember when my dad, as the state road foreman, built the road from Natural Bridges to Hite. Art Chaffin had promoted the road with the Utah Industrial Development Commission. They were to come up 241
