There’s a state highway in Arizona with a sign on it that says primitive road. It’s on the Apache Trail, State Route 88, the old road that winds from Apache Junction past Tortilla Flat and Canyon Lake up to Roosevelt Dam. It was originally cut through those mountains to haul supplies for the dam over a hundred years ago, and it’s one of only four roads the state officially designates as historic. In June 2019, the Woodbury Fire burned more than 100,000 acres along the trail. A few months later, heavy rain from what was left of Hurricane Lorena poured off the burned hillsides with nothing to hold it back, and it tore the road apart. The worst of it was a five mile stretch over Fish Creek Hill, the steep, narrow section that runs along the edge of a cliff. ADOT closed it. It stayed closed for five years. Before the fire, about 232 cars a day drove that stretch. In September 2024, ADOT reopened it after a $4 million temporary fix. But only for high clearance four wheel drives and UTVs...