Vintage California highway sign

[usends]

Can anyone shed any light where this might have been posted?  I'm thinking it may have been heading northbound near Inyokern.

[myosh_tino]

Can anyone shed any light where this might have been posted?  I'm thinking it may have been heading northbound near Inyokern.

I'm thinking it might have been southbound just south of Bishop which is approximately 60 miles north of the town of Lone Pine.  Northbound drivers would have taken what is now CA-190 (if it existed at the time the photo was taken) to Death Valley rather than drive the extra 20 or so miles north to Lone Pine.

[usends]

I'm thinking it might have been southbound just south of Bishop which is approximately 60 miles north of the town of Lone Pine.  Northbound drivers would have taken what is now CA-190 (if it existed at the time the photo was taken) to Death Valley rather than drive the extra 20 or so miles north to Lone Pine.

First, just to establish an earliest possible date: US 6 wasn't extended to CA until 1937.  The 1936 state highway map (http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?q=caltrans&sort=Date) indicates that most of the road that is CA-190 today did exist by that time, although the westernmost segment (the part that runs south of Owens Lake to Olancha) was not shown.  Instead, CA-190 followed what is now CA-136 to Lone Pine.  By the time of the 1938 map, the road south of Owens Lake had been built, but was not yet part of the state highway system. 

So here's one possibility: when the cutoff road (south of Owens Lake) was built, boosters in Lone Pine realized that much of the tourist traffic from SoCal would no longer be coming through town.  So they posted this sign, encouraging drivers to continue the extra miles to Lone Pine.  The sign doesn't mention the cutoff road, but simply notes that Death Valley is accessible from Lone Pine.

The other reason I suspect it was for northbound traffic is because there's no mention of US 395, which was established in CA two or three years prior to US 6.  It seems like if this was for southbound traffic, the sign would've mentioned 395 as well as (or instead of) US 6.  But since it only mentions US 6, it seems more likely to me that it was for traffic that was already on US 6, but prior to the point where it joined with 395.  (And on that note, it's interesting to point out that 395 still ran along what is now "Brown Road", so the junction with US 6 was quite a ways further north of Inyokern.)

[Mapmikey]

It looks like it was right about here to me (CA 14 at CA 178 west): http://goo.gl/maps/yIGcR

Notice behind the left post of the sign with a straight angled slope to the mountain with a little lump to the left.  The GMSV above shows something that looks just like that to me.

About 71 miles from Big Pine...

Mapmikey

[myosh_tino]

I'm thinking it might have been southbound just south of Bishop which is approximately 60 miles north of the town of Lone Pine.  Northbound drivers would have taken what is now CA-190 (if it existed at the time the photo was taken) to Death Valley rather than drive the extra 20 or so miles north to Lone Pine.

So here's one possibility: when the cutoff road (south of Owens Lake) was built, boosters in Lone Pine realized that much of the tourist traffic from SoCal would no longer be coming through town.  So they posted this sign, encouraging drivers to continue the extra miles to Lone Pine.  The sign doesn't mention the cutoff road, but simply notes that Death Valley is accessible from Lone Pine.

The other reason I suspect it was for northbound traffic is because there's no mention of US 395, which was established in CA two or three years prior to US 6.  It seems like if this was for southbound traffic, the sign would've mentioned 395 as well as (or instead of) US 6.  But since it only mentions US 6, it seems more likely to me that it was for traffic that was already on US 6, but prior to the point where it joined with 395.

That makes perfect sense!  I kind of forgot that current CA-14 used to be US 6.  For whatever reason, when I read your initial post, I was thinking you were talking about the sign being located on northbound 395, not northbound 6 (even though the sign distinctly said "Highway 6"  ).