DOCUTAH screens “My Father’s Highway” at new Dixie Technical College Auditorium
The epic story of an impossible road built on an improbable route
By Della Lowe
Dixie State University DOCUTAH International Documentary Film Festival will screen the documentary “My Father’s Highway” March 30 at the new theater at the Dixie Technical College in St. George. The film tells the epic story of how an impossible road was built on an improbable route and the people who overcame every obstacle, even death, to make sure it happened. To this day, it represents one of the most expensive and spectacular engineering feats in the history of the United States Interstate Highway System. The finished road takes a traveler on a 500-million-year geological journey on a four-lane superhighway that has become the economic lifeline of the desert southwest.
The film was produced and directed by Phil Tuckett, professor of digital film and executive director of DOCUTAH International Documentary Film Festival. This film is part of a series of documentaries professionally produced in concert with film students at DSU called “High Desert Chronicles,” films that spring from the environs of the desert southwest.
“I had always wanted to do this film since my wife and I returned to St George,” said Tuckett. “I was told there was a road through a slot canyon that was impassable, even on a horse, and now there was a four-lane highway on it. I always wondered where did that come from and who built it.”
This film tells the story about the route from Los Angeles northward — U.S. Interstate 15 — through Las Vegas crossing a section of rugged, high mountain Mojave Desert in the extreme northwest portion of Arizona. It then continues north to the Arizona/Utah border past St. George. This portion of I-15 was completed in 1973 at the cost of more than $61 million, or $100 an inch. The road winds through the Virgin River Gorge, at times only 150 feet wide with 2,000-foot cliffs towering on either side, revealing breathtaking scenic beauty.
We are delighted to screen this film in the new state-of-the-art auditorium at the Dixie Technical College. The film celebrates man’s ability to conquer obstacles with technology and ingenuity, so where better to present this film than at a school dedicated to those values?
Ticket reservations can be made at docutah.com/my-fathers-highway.
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