HIGHWAY ROUND THE HILLS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22336, 25 February 1938, Page 14

HIGHWAY ROUND THE HILLS

* BUILDING THE SUMMIT ROAD OPENING CEREMONY TO-MORROW A lifetime of human energies and thousands in cash have gone to the making of the paved stretch of motor highway from the Sign of the Kiwi to Evans Pass, which will be opened by the Hon. R. Semple, Minister for Transport, to-morrow afternoon.

Thirty years ago Mr H. G. Ell, whose name is a part of the history of the city’s hills, strode across the peaks with a surveyor, pegging out an easily graded track where it was his ambition to see a coach and four sweep by. He died while still endeavouring to realise his ideal—a Port Hills-Akaroa Summit road—and now a nine-mile section of the road is at last to be opened. Motorcars will pass to-morrow over a modern highway commanding an all-embracing view of the city, the plains, and the harbour, which has hitherto been denied to everyone but trampers. Mr Ell’s ambition is by no means fully realised. He planned a winding road round the hill-tops from the Godley Head to Akaroa, and the nine-mile stretch, although possibly the most important, is only a small section of the whole highway. Soon more miles will be added with the tar-sealing of the Kiwi-Gebbie’s Pass section, but at Gebbie’s Pass the road ends abruptly, and it may be years before it is resumed. Thirty Years’ Battle The history of the road is a history of battles. Mr Ell won sympathy for his work, but the practical expression of that sympathy, though generous in some quarters, was insufficient to carry the burden of the huge task he undertook. Mr Ell, who for some time was member of Parliament for the City of Christchurch and a Minister of the Crown, determined in 1906 to try to have a hill top road made right along the summit of the hills to Godley Head. An architect who was appointed by the Government to survey the road made a trial survey round the face of the Sugarloaf (near the Kiwi), hut advised Mr Ell that the formation of the road would be very costly. Mr Ell then for the time being abandoned the idea of a Summit road on that section, and in 1908 approached Mr J. Cracroft Wilson, of Cashmere, for cooperation in making a road down to Governor’s Bay. There was a “paper” road on the map, but it was too steep. Then he turned again to a summit road, from the eastern boundary of the Cashmere estate, near the Kiwi, to Evans Pass, This was first opposed, but the first sod was turned in November. 3908, by the Hop. Charles Bowen, later Sir Charles Bowen, and by 1909 the work was under way. The greater part of the cost was paid out of small sums voted by Parliament on Mr Ell’s application, and supplemented by public subscription which he collected. “This is only a part of the Port Hills-Akaroa Summit road,” he said then; "I shall hope to live long enough to look upon it completed, and that the Government and the people of Christchurch and Canterbury will stand by me and help me to realise this.” Pick and Shovel For 28 years Mr Ell waited to see his ambition realised, but he died when it still was not a great deal moce than a vision, and while relief workers were slowly and with little, if any, of his enthusiasm, tediously flattening out the roadway with pick and shovel and whelbarrow. A section from the Kiwi to Gebbie’s Pass was opened, but for some years after the first burst of activity, the road was left untended, and rapidly reverted towards its old state. Seven years ago, when the depression was approaching its peak, the Government turned to the Summit road as an outlet for the stream of men filing into the unemployment bureaux. Between 300 and 400 relief workers trudged up the hill every day, did a few hours’ work, and trudged down again, but progress was necessarily slow, and thousands of pounds poured away. Impatient with the progress, Mr Ell was nevertheless optimistic, and not long before his death in 1934 he walked into “The Press” office one evening and told a reporter that within a few months he would be declaring open the road between the Kiwi and the Bridle Path. There, again, he was optimistic because his prediction will not be fulfilled until to-morrow.

It is estimated that a considerable sum, not.much less than £500,000, is invested in the Summit road, though much of this money was relief wages that would have been paid on some other"project, and which cannot be said to represent the normal cost of such an undertaking. After Mr Ell’s death, Mr J. A. Thomson, now supervisor at the Sign of the Takahe, stepped, as has been said, into his mantle, and has continued his work and his enthusiasm. About July, 1935, when the depression was soon to be history, the relief work was stopped on the Summit road and again its future was threatened. It was then that the Citizens Commitee was formed, and Mr Thomson went with a deputation to Wellington, asking for full-time men to complete the Gebbie’s Pass-Evans Pass highway. The new Government conceded the request, and in the 18 months from then until now. more- work has been done than in the whole of the five years’ struggle that went before.