gallon.
   Ernie Ross, E.S. Brett,
the local hardware store
owner, William Ellenburgh,
the local painter, and Bill
Schierholtz, the newspaper
editor, as well as Bill
Bradshaw, farm equipment
dealer, all agreed that Rocky
Mountain House should have a

good road to connect their
community to the tourist
destinations of Banff, Jasper
and even through to Golden,
B.C. over the Howse Pass.
   In the late 1920s, a
party of Alberta Government
surveyors went out on the
trail as far as Nordegg, and
said that building a road was

not possible. That was the
first "no" that the intrepid
and determined Ernie Ross
wasn't going to accept. He
and his band of Trail Blazers
began a campaign to prove
that the terrain west of
Nordegg was passable by motor
car. A series of overland
trips began in 1928, and the

Trail Blazers went farther
west on each successive trek,
until they reached their goal
on the Banff-Jasper highway
in 1940 after pushing west
for 10 days. It wasn't easy,
and it involved cutting down
trees by hand, fording
creeks, and winching vehicles
up steep rocky slopes. But