From 2011 through 2013 one of the most common highways I traveled on in California was CA 79 between Beaumont and Temecula. Recently I drove a segment of CA 79 from Temecula southeast to CA 371, that being the case I put together a blog on the somewhat odd history of the highway. CA 79 was one of the original Sign State Routes but had a logical routing from US 395 in Temecula southward to US 80. CA 79 was eventually extended to US 60 in the Moreno Valley Badlands via what had been the first CA 83 around 1940. In the 1960s CA 79 took a somewhat illogical realignment from Beaumont back to Temecula via Hemet which was driven largely by I-15 consuming CA 71. In recent years much of the urban mileage of CA 79 in incorporated cities has been relinquished but there appears to be a large scale realignment close to becoming a reality from Hemet southwest towards Temecula.
https://www.gribblenation.org/2019/10/california-state-route-79.html
^^^^^^^^^
Actually, the realignment of CA 79 away from its original alignment south of Hemet over to Winchester Road was done in 1966, a couple of years before I-15 was extended south to San Diego with the batch of '68 Interstate additions. The reason for doing so was the desire of D8 to relinquish the route from Hemet to the Aguanga area due to not only its substandard (winding, very poor sight lines) characteristics, but because the 1959 state freeway & expressway system pointedly avoided that alignment but did include a new-terrain connector from CA 74 southwest to Temecula that was quite close to the existing Winchester Road. As it turned out, the Division of Highways simply elected to take over maintenance of Winchester, bringing it into the system and allowing them to relinquish old CA 79 (previous 83) to Riverside County and the City of Hemet; it became signed Riverside County R3 the following year. The whole thing was essentially a sop to housing developers; the regional "master plan" contained plans for numerous large housing tracts flanking the new CA 79 as well as CA 71 and US 395, accompanied by large-scale commercial development centered on that portion of Temecula where the realigned 79 intersected the 395/71 combined alignment (this whole phenomenon was studied in a land-use class I took at UCR back in late 1967). Temecula as it is today (a rather massive exurb) was planned over a half-century ago to be the regional powerhouse it currently is.
The problem was it threw the area's highway network into chaos -- and this was before I-15 (and I-215) were even on the scene. The Division of Highways had recently brought the connector from 79 near Aguanga northeast to CA 74 into the state system as a "shortcut" from the San Diego area to Coachella Valley cities. Without it, CA 71 would have simply been truncated at Murietta, north of Temecula (at the site of the present 15/215 split) -- but D8 chose to multiplex 71 & 79 together for about 20 miles total to Aguanga, where 71 struck out over the new route NE to CA 74 (which was a bit awkward, as 71 and 74 then intersected one another twice, at Elsinore and near Anza. This arrangement lasted all of 8 years; after it was decided to route I-15 down CA 71 from Corona south to Temecula, in 1974 D8 simply truncated CA 71 at the (then) US 395 junction in Murietta, leaving CA 79 as the sole occupant of the Temecula-Aguanga route; the Anza connector was redesignated as CA 371. This happened at the same time as the commissioning of CA 330 due to the reroute of CA 30 away from the San Bernardino mountains and over to Redlands -- so a 300-series number wasn't an isolated case. Of course, when I-15 was completed south of Corona CA 71 was cut back to its Corona-Pomona section, and US 395 was cut back to I-15 at Hesperia, with, first, I-15E and after 1982 I-215 taking over its routing. But today that relatively short (about 3 mile) section of I-15 multiplexed with CA 79 in Temecula is one of the most congested locations in the Inland Empire; and both adjacent sections of CA 79 itself -- relinquished or not -- are the two most heavily developed commercial "strips" in the area (it could be the poster child for the phenomenon of suburban/exurban sprawl!). For better or worse (and local traffic certainly falls into the latter category!) the regional developers in the late '60's were somewhat prescient -- although it's difficult to believe that they could have foreseen the level of dense development that the Temecula area displays today.
Something I've found to be vexing after reaching the Moreno Valley Badlands, CA 83 and CA 79 this past month is; why not just keep the original CA 83 instead of making it part of CA 79? Temecula seemed like a much more logical endpoint for CA 79 no matter what alignment it was one north of the City. CA 83 wasn't even reused until the 1964 Renumbering, seems like it would have been relevant even in the modern highway system on the current alignment of 79.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on October 30, 2019, 11:33:06 PM
Something I've found to be vexing after reaching the Moreno Valley Badlands, CA 83 and CA 79 this past month is; why not just keep the original CA 83 instead of making it part of CA 79? Temecula seemed like a much more logical endpoint for CA 79 no matter what alignment it was one north of the City. CA 83 wasn't even reused until the 1964 Renumbering, seems like it would have been relevant even in the modern highway system on the current alignment of 79.
The 79-for-83 switch happened only a few years after US 395 was commissioned in CA. Its original San Diego-Riverside path via Vista, Fallbrook, and Lake Elsinore was indeed convoluted. Much of that, part of LRN 77, was originally slated to be CA 71 prior to 395 entering the picture. But once 395 happened, it was apparently decided to make SSR 79 an eastern parallel alternative to that route, so it subsumed old SSR 83, with SSR 71 serving as a northern "feeder" for 79, funneling traffic in from east of L.A. all the way to the Inland Empire. Temecula was nothing more than a rural junction point until substantial development began in the mid-60's; the Division of Highways thought it more important to locate Hemet, at the time the largest town southeast of Riverside, along this alternate N-S corridor than to serve the smaller town also served by US 395 and SSR 71.