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CA 168 West and the failled Piute Pass Highway

Started by Max Rockatansky, July 26, 2017, 09:14:03 PM

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Max Rockatansky

So my trip with the Challenger up to the State Highway Passes in the Sierras this weekend has been delayed....for an undetermined amount of time.  That being the case I thought that I would redo something a little more local and photo clinch the 65.84 miles of modern Western CA 168 from Clovis up to Huntington Lake.  The twist here today is that I took the bulk of Kaiser Pass Road and went back down the original 1935 alignment of SSR 168 back to Clovis.  This will take me awhile to sort out into a Road Blog format so for now the photos are available followed by my brief synopsis:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/151828809@N08/7r4EgF

So with that in all in mind here is the recap:

-  The CA 168 freeway still seems pretty fresh which makes sense given it is relatively new.  I couldn't imagine how awful it was trying to get to Shaver or Huntington Lake slogging down Shaw and Clovis Avenue in downtown Clovis. 
-  168 seems to have weathered the winter fairly well which is probably due to the roadway being open all year.  There was some minor Caltrans shoulder work just west of Shaver Lake and a tree trimming operation about ten miles west of Huntington Lake. 
-  Sadly, still no (CA 168 END) signage at the junction of Kaiser Pass Road/Huntington Lake Road after all these years.
-  Kaiser Pass Road was in terrible shape after it dropped down to a single lane from the two-lane five miles in.  There was a ton of road damage that wasn't present last year; namely tons of pot holes, subsiding, and lots of rock fall.  I had to get out twice just to clear the road of rocks that were tire cutters which isn't fun when you have a blind corner behind you.  There was a lot of campers going out to Mono Hot Springs and Cal Edison had a bunch of vehicles out today.  In total I encountered 24 vehicles in the one-lane section which is way higher than I have before.  I got lucky coming down from Kaiser Pass to Huntington Lake and had just enough room to skate by cliff-side past a Forest Service Fire Truck.  I would probably say given all the factors I've described that Kaiser Pass Road has passed Mineral King Road as the most difficult paved road in California.  But I think this one photo will convey why anyone would want to take Kaiser Pass Road:

IMG_2657 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

(Incidentally I don't think that there are many vistas on a roadway that can top the one on Kaiser Pass)

-  Huntington Lake Road was in good shape.  There was a really wasn't much road damage besides a really odd random "stop" in what appears to be a minor slip-out east of Big Creek.  I would have to venture some parts of Huntington Lake Road are 20% grade, the downhill drive is pretty wild and something good for 2nd or 3rd gear.  No wonder 168 got realigned south of Huntington Lake given how much more gentle the terrain is.
-  Tollhouse Road was pretty much like how it always has been.  I got a lot more pictures of the actual hairpins but the segment largely is still what I would consider to be at State Highway quality.

So when I get an opportunity the next couple days I'll get my historical analysis all written up on the alignment shifts of SSR 168/CA 168 over the years.  Really this an intriguing highway given how little of it is actually on the original alignment these days.


hm insulators

Been many years since I've been to Big Creek. The roads haven't really changed much. When I was living in Van Nuys, there were a couple of occasions when I took a drive to Big Creek to check out the huge Southern California Edison projects up there, as someone with my interest in electrical installations would be liable to do.

As the population of southern California was skyrocketing a hundred years ago, and it quickly became clear that the little-bitty power line from the Kern River was not sufficient, the original Big Creek power lines were built (one picture at the bottom of Page 3 of your photos shows the installation), if I recall correctly, mainly to service the Pacific Electric Red Cars of a bygone era. At first, they were 110KV, upgraded to 220KV. The lines ran from Big Creek, roughly paralleled present-day California 65, skirted Bakersfield, went up and over the mountains, ran through present-day Sylmar and Lakeview Terrace, skirted Sunland, Tujunga and La Crescenta before stopping at Eagle Rock near Pasadena and Glendale. In the early 1970s, the southernmost forty or fifty miles of the line was totally rebuilt--the old lines and towers were ripped out and replaced with the tall gray towers you see today when you drive I-210 through Sylmar and Lakeview Terrace. More power lines were built from Big Creek to Los Angeles during the ensuing decades, and I think to this day, SCE is still adding on to the power generation infrastructure up there.

Beautiful pictures, as always! Thank you!
Remember: If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

I'd rather be a child of the road than a son of a ditch.


At what age do you tell a highway that it's been adopted?

Max Rockatansky

168 is a complete treat for an infrastructure fan.  I spent a good deal of time checking out both ends of the Ward Tunnel.  That still amazes me that a tunnel through all that rock on Kaiser Ridge was actually built, especially considering it was almost 100 years ago.  It would have been a hell of a ride trying to get up to Huntington via downtown Clovis, Tollhouse Road, and Huntington Lake Road...much less Kaiser Pass...in a truck.  Really all the shifts in alignment east of Clovis seemed to be born out of necessity during the phases of the Big Creek Project.  I'm probably 2/3 through typing up blog article on Surewhynotnow, it's been a lot of fun reading up on history of the area and Big Creek in general.

myosh_tino

Boy, your photos bring back some childhood memories.  I spent 4 summers at Huntington Lake at Camp Oljato, a Boy Scout camp located on the south shore.  Our troop met at the Stanford Area Council headquarters in Palo Alto in mid-July (along with all the other troops scheduled for that session), and boarded a bus which took us to the north shore where we took a boat across the lake to camp.

Routing was pretty standard... US 101 to CA-152 to CA-99 to CA-145.  After stopping for lunch in Madera, we'd head east on CA-145 to Road 145 to Road 206 to Millerton Road at the base of the Friant Dam.  From there we would continue east onto Auberry Rd until we met up with CA-168 at Prather.

One year, on the way home, the bus driver got lost and missed the turn at Auberry Rd and stayed on CA-168 all the way to Fresno.  I was asleep at the time he missed the turn.  When I woke up, we were just entering Fresno and had to use Herndon Ave to get back to CA-99.
Quote from: golden eagle
If I owned a dam and decided to donate it to charity, would I be giving a dam? I'm sure that might be a first because no one really gives a dam.

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: myosh_tino on July 28, 2017, 12:23:26 AM
Boy, your photos bring back some childhood memories.  I spent 4 summers at Huntington Lake at Camp Oljato, a Boy Scout camp located on the south shore.  Our troop met at the Stanford Area Council headquarters in Palo Alto in mid-July (along with all the other troops scheduled for that session), and boarded a bus which took us to the north shore where we took a boat across the lake to camp.

Routing was pretty standard... US 101 to CA-152 to CA-99 to CA-145.  After stopping for lunch in Madera, we'd head east on CA-145 to Road 145 to Road 206 to Millerton Road at the base of the Friant Dam.  From there we would continue east onto Auberry Rd until we met up with CA-168 at Prather.

One year, on the way home, the bus driver got lost and missed the turn at Auberry Rd and stayed on CA-168 all the way to Fresno.  I was asleep at the time he missed the turn.  When I woke up, we were just entering Fresno and had to use Herndon Ave to get back to CA-99.

Apparently Auberry Road is going to be pretty hard to miss.  That little project I captured apparently is a roundabout that is going to replace that really fast turn onto Auberry Road.  Apparently a lot of people were getting into wrecks at that junction, really it was either the roundabout or traffic light I would think. 

Yeah there was actually a camping ground actually crossing from the south short of Huntington Lake when I was taking those photos.  I want to say they were Girl Scouts but I was way too far away to be sure.  I guess there really never was much development on the South Shore of the Lake despite CA 168 being realigned that way years ago.

Max Rockatansky

Finally finished the road blog on Surewhynotnow:

https://surewhynotnow.blogspot.com/2017/07/tale-of-ca-168-west-climb-to-kaiser-on.html

Essentially the entire routing of CA 168 whether it be the modern one or the alignment from 1934 is documented with photos.  I also did most of Kaiser Pass Road as well....that took way longer than I thought to type all out.

Max Rockatansky

Found myself up in Prather today and the roundabout project appears to halfway completed. 

IMG_3234 by Max Rockatansky, on Flickr

Essentially the roundabout was semi-functional, it looks like the work at the actual junction of 168 and Auberry Road still needs to be done.  Weird to see this all moving along as such a fast clip.

Edit:

A little companion piece I wrote up about the CA 168 construction in Prather, the Friant Dam, Millerton ghost town, and the Stockton-Los Angeles Road:

https://surewhynotnow.blogspot.com/2017/08/ca-168-road-work-update-and-friant-dam.html

Max Rockatansky

Usually I don't revisit blogs this old very often but in the past several years various documents have come to light regarding the planned route of CA 168 over the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the Piute Pass Highway.  Namely three documents were used to update the CA 168 blog:

-  The August 1934 Department of Public Works Guide announcing the Signed State Highways.  On Page 23 a map of the planned route of CA 168 over Piute Pass can be seen.  On Page 32 the alignment of CA 168 is clearly implied to be a Trans-Sierra route from Fresno via Huntington Lake to the Nevada State Line.
-  A 1935 Goshua Highway Map of California shows the surveyed route for CA 168 over Piute Pass.
-  A Sierra National Forest article on the Piute Pass Highway shows in great detail the surveys for the Piute Pass Highway in the 1920 which led to adoption of LRN 76.

It appears that main driver for the plans for the CA 168 on Piute Pass Highway being killed off is from General Grant National Park being expanded into Kings Canyon National Park in 1940.  The expansion to Kings Canyon National Park appears to have been extended just northward enough to annex the surveyed routes of the Piute Pass Highway east of Florence Lake.  As a side note Kings Canyon National Park also appears to have killed plans to build CA 180 into a Trans-Sierra Highway.

https://www.gribblenation.org/2017/07/tale-of-ca-168-west-climb-to-kaiser-on.html



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