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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 6 (October 1, 1928)

The Great Highway

The Great Highway.

Such was the manner of the discovery of the route by which the rail and road now cross the great Alpine chain—a discovery that quickly proved of enormous value to Canterbury and the West Coast. The 3,000 feet saddle which Mr. Dobson traversed on the Waimakariri-Otira watershed was named Arthur's Pass, after him, and it was not long before the rugged defile down which he clambered, often in the icy water, became a splendid safe highway for wheel traffic.

For more than half a century travellers between east and west traversed the roof of the Island in the well-horsed stage coaches. Important as the route was in the coaching days, it is infinitely more valuable to-day, when passengers by the railway speed smoothly and easily through the heart of the mountains, taking the wonderfully-engineered subterranean short-cut through the tip of the pass, and cover, in seven hours, the journey from coast to coast —a journey that used to take us two long days.

Looking Up Otira Gorge.

Looking Up Otira Gorge.