Saga of 'demanding' road goes on

The closure this week of Skippers Rd, for urgent repairs, is another small chapter in a lengthy history of maintenance problems this "demanding and at times terrifying" 17km route has posed its owners since it was first opened about 1890.

Today's images from the Lakes District Museum archives are a graphic illustration of that quotation, taken from the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (NZHPT) website.

It shows a horse-drawn wagon making its way around the precarious Pinchers Bluff, named after the man contracted to build this most difficult section of the road.

According to Prof F. W. Craddock's 1973 book, Golden Canyon, Mr Pincher and his workers hacked through the schist face with picks, shovels and hand drills.

"The name found favour also with those who, `at a tight pinch', drove heavy wagons drawn by six horses around the bluff rather than over the side of it and into the river," he wrote.

The NZHPT says the men had to hang from ropes over the cliff, 183m above the Shotover River, to complete much of the work.

Skippers Rd was surveyed in 1883 and took another seven years to complete.

It replaced a series of tracks built from 1862 when gold was first discovered in the area, giving "rough and steep" access to popular mining spots, such as Deep Creek, Maori Point, Stony Creek and Skippers itself.

But these were hazardous and often fatal routes.

Prof Craddock reports that during the frozen winter of 1863 several miners died by slipping on the steep tracks and falling over the cliff edges to the river below.

Some of those who braved the same tracks with packhorses carrying heavy loads of supplies suffered similar fates.

Thus, pressure for a road increased, especially when quartz mining became more popular, requiring heavy machinery to be hauled into such remote sites as the Bulldendale mine, about 10km north of Skippers, the NZHPT says.

Building Skippers Rd required much determination and tenacity by the four contractors and their gangs of men who worked on the project from 1883 to 1890.

John Maher and Sons, of Invercargill, completed the section from the Skippers Saddle (1036m) to Pinchers Bluff in 1888 for 3800.

Prof Craddock says a motor car was first driven on Skippers Rd - illegally - in 1912, the route being confined to horse-drawn wagons, riders on horseback and pedestrians until 1918, when a concession to motor vehicles was made between 7pm and 8am.

That restriction was not lifted until 1926 when, Prof Craddock notes, ". . . it was evident, even to a conservative county council composed predominantly of farmers, that automobiles greatly outnumbered horses on the road".