Former US Route 91/466 in Baker

[Max Rockatansky]

The community of Baker in the Mojave Desert of California was once a waypoint on US Route 91 and US Route 466.  Baker traces it's origins to when it was constructed as a Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad siding in 1908.   In the runup to the US Route System being created US Route 91 was planned as ending in Bannock but was ultimately realigned to the Silver Lake Cutoff of the Arrowhead Trail.  The Silver Lake Cutoff originally bypassed Baker in favor of the Tonopah & Tidewater Siding of Silver Lake.  Ultimately US Route 91 would be aligned through Baker via Baker Boulevard by 1928 when Legislative Route 31 was being constructed north of Barstow.   US Route 91 was later joined by US Route 466 through Baker by 1933.  In 1964 during the construction of Interstate 15 US Route 466 was truncated from Morro Bay to the intersection of Baker Boulevard and CA 127/Death Valley Boulevard.  US Route 466 would ultimately be shifted to Interstate 15 Exit 246 at CA 127 when the Baker Bypass opened to traffic in 1965.  US Route 91 was approved for truncation to Baker in 1966 which ended via a multiplex with US Route 466 and Interstate 15.  US Route 466 would be decommissioned in 1971 which was followed by US Route 91 being truncated out of California in 1974.

https://www.gribblenation.org/2021/04/former-us-route-91-and-us-route-466-in.html

[The Ghostbuster]

US 466 should have been truncated on the eastern end back to Barstow, California when US 93 was extended from Glendale, Nevada to Kingman, Arizona. The long duplexes with US 91 and later US 93 seem excessive to me.

[Max Rockatansky]

US 466 should have been truncated on the eastern end back to Barstow, California when US 93 was extended from Glendale, Nevada to Kingman, Arizona. The long duplexes with US 91 and later US 93 seem excessive to me.

US 466 certainly made more east of Barstow when it was the stand alone US Route over the Hoover Dam.  I guess the "alternate" US 466 loop to US 66 to Las Vegas had some merit for tourism purposes, trouble is that it never touched it's parent route in California.

[sparker]

US 466 should have been truncated on the eastern end back to Barstow, California when US 93 was extended from Glendale, Nevada to Kingman, Arizona. The long duplexes with US 91 and later US 93 seem excessive to me.

US 466 certainly made more east of Barstow when it was the stand alone US Route over the Hoover Dam.  I guess the "alternate" US 466 loop to US 66 to Las Vegas had some merit for tourism purposes, trouble is that it never touched it's parent route in California.

When the original I-15 Barstow Bypass was built, one of the design features -- the wye interchange for the business loop, featuring LH exit and entrances from and to NB I-15 -- was to be the original junction of westward US 466, which was, like its relocated CA 58 successor, planned to be a freeway for at least the portion crossing the Santa Fe yards and the adjacent Mojave River.  But that configuration never came to fruition, partially because Santa Fe expanded their yards westward, relocating the junction between the L.A. and Bay Area lines to right where the US 466 freeway was intended to go.  Not wanting to deploy a continuous line of longer bridges -- and rethinking the LH exit/entrance concept -- Caltrans D8 negotiated an alternate parallel path a little less than a mile west -- and coordinated with Santa Fe for a mutual easement for both (by then) the CA 58 freeway stub and the relocated line to Mojave, Bakersfield, and beyond.  The rail line and the 1997-opened CA 58 freeway shadow each other into Hinkley before diverging.  But from 1961 to the 1964 statewide renumbering, the plans were for both US 91 and US 466 to follow I-15 to the original west Barstow interchange, where US 466 would diverge -- but for about two miles US 466 and "parent" US 66 would have a shared alignment once the original freeway plans were realized.