The old Division of Highways was a bit more flexible about signage than the current Caltrans; a few county roads, including Derrick Avenue, got signage pre-state-adoption or maintenance; they tended to be receptive to state and/or local power brokers regarding this practice. According to a number of accounts, Getty Oil, which had several small fields in and around Coalinga but was not satisfied with the frequency of service Southern Pacific was supplying to that area to move loaded tank cars out from the loading areas outside of town along SSR 198 and wanted to supplement it with tanker trucks, somewhere around 1945 pressed the state senator representing much of western Kings and Fresno Counties to ask the Division of Highways to deploy a state highway north from Coalinga to Merced, where there was an oil loading facility along competing Santa Fe; they wanted a facility on which to "convoy" several tank trucks at a time to make it worthwhile for Santa Fe to handle the loads. The Division already had much of the pathway covered by LRN 41/SSR 33 from Mendota to Dos Palos Wye, LRN 32/SSR 152 east for several miles from there, and LRN 123 the rest of the way into Merced (it wasn't signed as SSR 59 until at least 1960). But the Division was reluctant to take on the most direct route from Coalinga to Mendota, Derrick Road (named as such because it passed through Getty oilfields in the hills north of Coalinga, featuring numerous oil derricks), primarily because the oiled-earth facility was a county maintenance nightmare due to consistent rutting by the small but stout oilfield trucks with exceptionally heavy per-axle loading. But politics prevailed, and the Division worked out deals with Fresno County to split the maintenance costs -- and the road was signed as SSR 33 by mid-1946. Eventually an asphalt overlay was done on the road, and the state assumed maintenance and ownership in 1957. This section of SSR 33 wasn't the only county road to receive state signage -- another infamous gap, that of SSR 39 between La Habra and Covina, was signed in 1955 (when the San Bernardino/US 60-70-99 freeway was completed through the San Gabriel Valley); that signage persisted until 1972 -- even though almost all the reassurance shields remained the 1950's spec larger white porcelain design with button copy on the digits (the first one sans bear!) even after the green shield version was introduced in 1964.