Skirting the urban strongholds of the gentlemen in office Brown knocked at every door in the district. He berated none nor claimed he had all the answers to an obviously difficult problem. “... Roads built there will lead here. Everybody will gain....” Then to the next cabin and the next canyon until he’d seen every voter.
Before the opposition knew he had been around, he was back in Shoshone selling bacon and beans.
When the votes were counted the overlords of the west side gasped. “Who the hell’s this Brown? Didn’t even know he was running....”
Taking office January 1, 1925, he found that the beaten incumbent had spent all the money allocated for road maintenance in his own bailiwick before retiring. Nevertheless, Brown convinced the new board his election proved that the people of the entire county agreed with him that the Death Valley area could no longer be neglected and managed to get a niggardly appropriation which would not have built a mile of decent mountain road, and his district had three challenging mountain ranges to cross.
With this appropriation he was expected to care for a mileage four times greater than that of the west side and was thus responsible for not only eastern approaches but maintenance of 150 miles of road from Darwin, all roads in the valley and those which furnished the north and south approaches. He managed to get $5000 after two years. With this he procured road machinery on a rental basis and succeeded in making a fair desert road. Then he began a one-man crusade to exploit Death Valley as a tourist attraction. “We need only roads a tourist can travel.”
He worked just as diligently for all of Inyo’s roads. “We have one of the world’s best vacation lands,” he told the west-siders. “You have an abundance of beautiful lakes and streams in a setting of mountains impressive as any in the world. On our side we offer the appeal of the Panamint, the Funeral Range, and spectacular Death Valley. Tourists will come to both of us if we give them a chance and they will be our best crop.”
By 1926 his crusade for roads had spread beyond Inyo county lines. San Bernardino county, through which passes Highway 66, a main transcontinental artery, joins Inyo on the south. Its board of supervisors was in session one day when Brown strode in. Most of them he knew. He wanted their advice, he told them. “Your county and mine need more roads to bring more people. The easiest way into Death Valley is through your county from Baker. The distance from Baker to the Inyo county line is 45 miles. If you will build the road to the Inyo line, I will build it from that point to Furnace Creek, 71 miles. Such a road would open Death Valley to the public and the tourists who will travel will spend enough money in your towns to pay your share of the cost.”
San Bernardino supervisors agreed to consider it but were not enthusiastic. One of America’s largest counties, San Bernardino had also one of its largest road problems.
Brown kept plugging, arranging meetings, convincing residents that the county’s portion of the road would be over flat country and over roads already passable, and its construction inexpensive.
Finally San Bernardino county supervisors agreed and by April, 1929, he had 71 miles of passable road. The result was that Death Valley was no longer remote as the Congo and tourists began to come.