If you have visited Valley of Fire State Park, you may have seen the Arrowhead Trail, but do you know who named it? Charles H. Bigelow an automobile enthusiast who had started racing automobiles in the early 1900s. He participated in events such as the 1908 Los Angeles to Phoenix race, the 1909 Corona race, the 1910 Los Angeles to Phoenix race, Santa Monica races, the 1911 Panama-Pacific events, and various Los Angeles to Phoenix competitions.
(Charles H. Bigelow Driving an Oldsmobile Official Car. Washington County Historical Society, https://wchsutah.org/people/charles-h-bigelow.php)
Bigelow dreamt of setting the fastest record for motor vehicle travel from Salt Lake City to Southern California. To help make the route passable, he worked with members of local communities, using scrapers and plows, to grade sections of the road between St. George and Santa Clara. This was essential in making the route usable for automobiles and helped lay the foundation for what would become a major desert highway corridor connecting Salt Lake City, Nevada, and Southern California.
To show his efforts and publicize the Arrowhead Trail, Bigelow and one of his key collaborators, Douglas White a representative of the Salt Lake Route railroad, worked together to start a new magazine called Arrowhead, the official magazine of the Salt Lake Route. Through the magazine they had an extensive publicity campaign in newspapers across the West. Bigelow was praised in a newspaper entitled “Arrowhead Trail is Attractive from Scenic Viewpoint” by The Salt Lake Tribune. The article stated that, “It required an individual of extensive desert and mountain road experience to originally map out this Arrowhead Trail and when Charles Bigelow took to the route with his Oldsmobile scout car” (Salt Lake Tribune, 17 Dec. 1916, quoted in Edward Leo Lyman).
During 1915 and 1916, Bigelow repeatedly drove the proposed route in his Oldsmobile, a vehicle he nicknamed “Cactus Kate”, a two-cylinder REO roadster. However, one of his most prominent races would be in June 1917, when he set the record between Salt Lake City and LA. He covered the distance in 36 hours and 14 minutes. Bigelow described this as a "military run," during which he demonstrated the feasibility of the Arrowhead Trail for troop movement should the railroads become unusable during World War One.
(June 3, 1917, edition of The Salt Lake Tribune details a military scouting party setting a record for traveling between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, https://wchsutah.org/people/charles-h-bigelow6.pdf).
(Official Arrowhead Oldsmobile Car, Washington County Utah Historical Society, https://wchsutah.org/people/charles-h-bigelow6.pdf).
Bigelow firmly believed that the Arrowhead Trail was one of the core reasons he achieved the record: “I do not believe that we could have even approached the record that we made on any other route except the Arrowhead Trail, which I am sure offers the tourist the very best road conditions” (C.H. Bigelow, June 3, 1917, Salt Lake Tribune).
Bigelow paved (figuratively and literally) the Arrowhead Trail and, in the process, allowed tourists to navigate the desert safely by motor vehicle at a time when travel was difficult and the use of motor vehicles was uncommon. Due to efforts like his, the Valley of Fire State Park, as it is called today, gradually became more visited, valued, and accessible.
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(August, 1924, Southern California Traffic Journal, Washington County Utah Historical Society, https://wchsutah.org/people/charles-h-bigelow6.pdf).
