Batongguan Traversing Trail Construction Memorial

A weathered stone marker on a mountain access road behind Zhuole Elementary School (卓樂國小) in Zhuoxi, Hualien, built around 1920 to commemorate the police, guards, and workers who died cutting the first section of the Batongguan Traversing Trail (八通關越道路). The boulder, about 120 cm tall, bears the name of the road project on its face above the words “monument to the fallen” (殉職者之碑), with the names of the twenty-one dead on the reverse. Among them was the Hualien Port police inspector Umezawa Masashi (梅澤柾), who had led construction along this section. The first phase was driven through between June 1919 and March 1920, and the full route opened in January 1921. Long untended, the stone is often difficult to discern beneath the overgrowth.