The end of the Pinzgau World
The opening of the narrow-gauge railway from Zell am See to Krimml in 1898 brought no improvement to the Gerlos Road because the inhabitants of Upper Pinzgau could not agree on a mutual objective. One side argued for an improvement of the "Ronach Trail", the other were determined to have a new road via Krimml because the Pinzgau Railway ended almost 3 kilometres before the waterfalls, and therefore a modern road was to be first built to this wonder of nature and then further onto the Gerlos.This finally took place in 1932: important people argued for a 8 kilometre shortening of the projected route of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road with a long tunnel through the main alpine crest. But experts decided that this extra expenditure for the tunnel variant would be much more sensibly invested in "extending the 35 kilometre Gerlos Road and to satisfactorily reconstruct the 20 kilometre Zill Valley road for modern motor vehicles, and to improve the Pinzgau main road."
Unfortunately a world economic crisis and the Second World War adjourned all of these plans so that it took until the blossoming of the economic miracle before in 1949 Dip. Eng Franz Wallack, the builder of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road, presented the new Gerlos Road project on commission by the government.
Thus the Grossglockner High Alpine Road PLC started in 1960 the two-year building period of this 12 kilometre road over 558 altitude metres with a maximum gradient of nine percent. The official opening of the Gerlos Alpine Road took place on 1 December 1962. When Tyrol and the Tauern power stations joined in 1964 to open the road between the top of the pass and the village of Gerlos with the building of the Durchlaß Reservoir, the earlier sins of omission were forgotten.
The immensely attractive Gerlos Alpine Road for tourism forms the connection between two valleys, which more than ever today serves as a connecting link as well as a unique natural experience in the Hohe Tauern National Park.
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