Unconstructed CA 168 section near Prather?

[thsftw]

Is there a story behind this and why it was never completed? I looked at the Gribblenation guide on the highway and couldn't find anything. It looks like they tried to make a freeway section and...didn't?

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.0446976,-119.4739438,750m/data=!3m1!1e3

[pderocco]

Is there a story behind this and why it was never completed? I looked at the Gribblenation guide on the highway and couldn't find anything. It looks like they tried to make a freeway section and...didn't?

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.0446976,-119.4739438,750m/data=!3m1!1e3

You can see it as a proposed road in the California Official maps 1966-1971. In 1973, they show that part of it as open. The unbuilt part remained on the maps ever since. Of course, they had bypassed the really bad part north of Tollhouse.

[kurumi]

Dan Faigin's site has some information: https://www.cahighways.org/ROUTE168.html

And GribbleNation's page on Auberry Road has background and maps: https://www.gribblenation.org/2019/11/auberry-road-and-wildflower-trail.html

An expressway was once intended to extend from there to the (now freeway) in Clovis.

[Max Rockatansky]

The Piute Pass Highway would have connected the segments of CA 168.  Really what killed the Forest Service pursuing a Trans-Sierra Highway over Piute Pass was the expansion of General Grant National Park into Kings Canyon National Park during 1940.  This also ended up killing the Kings Canyon Highway between Cedar Grove-Kearsarge Pass. 

I hit in the Piute Pass Highway here:

https://www.gribblenation.org/2017/07/tale-of-ca-168-west-climb-to-kaiser-on.html?m=1

[rte66man]

I like the parking lot at the intersection where 168 would have continued on a new path. Is it some sort of commuter lot?

[Max Rockatansky]

I like the parking lot at the intersection where 168 would have continued on a new path. Is it some sort of commuter lot?

It is.  The reason it's there is so people can car pool during the winter to the China Peak ski resort.