I will be hosting a presentation regarding the history of the highways around Oakhurst at the Fresno Flats Historic Village and Park on 5/7/25.
Information about all this can be found on the Fresno Flats Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1184314846712364/
The event headline is as follows:
"Since the establishment of the Stockton-Los Angeles Road in 1853 the Sierra Nevada foothills of what is now Madera County has been a hub of highway development. Much of the existing infrastructure in the area was established by the late 1880s with the plotting of the Fresno-Fresno Flats Road and Yosemite Stage Road. The area was of great interest during the early State Highway era due to the desirable access it could provide for logging interests and automotive based recreational travel to Yosemite National Park. Even Minaret Summit was briefly considered for a proposed extension of Interstate 70 into California before the era of environmental impact assessment began. Doors open at 5:30pm for snacks and for meeting our speaker. The lecture starts at 6:30 PM sharp."
If anyone is in the area feel free to drop in. I will be talking about the proposal to extend I-70 into California via Minaret Summit. Given that was a lost item in the road community I'm curious to see what kind of reaction that part gets from the attendees.
I had to work up a couple presentation format alternatives. If anyone is interested in having a look, I put a saved copy on Flickr. I used a lot of the I-70 extension documents I received from Caltrans last year which appear in the presentation:
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCcV3i
Had an almost packed house at Fresno Flats. The Madera County folks know their stuff and gave me some new things to look into.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02Mn32jBRLtTavQuiZ32HQSqjW5dz1R1tkFdVoy3swmUqRQiBn19UdXAxTvD8r483Ql&id=100055189314256&mibextid=wwXIfr
My wife took a live video of the presentation. I'm trying to figure out how to upload it here.