Ridge Route
The Ridge Route' was the popular name given to California's first highway linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley, and was particularly used to travel from the city of Los Angeles to Bakersfield. Its official name was the Castaic-Tejon Route.
History
Surveying began in 1912 on what was one of the largest and most daunting feats of road engineering ever attempted up to that time; so daunting a task that there was serious discussion about splitting the state in two at the mountains because it was deemed impossible to build a road over them. The Automobile Club of Southern California as well as political interests led the charge to build the highway and preserve the state.
The Ridge Route was completed in 1915 at a cost of $1.2 million which was covered by a 1909 bond issue that taxpayers didn't pay off until 1965. Originally opened with an unpaved roadbed that was oiled to keep the dust to a minimum, by 1919 the highway was paved with four-inch thick (10.2 cm) steel-reinforced concrete. The highway got its name because it followed the ridgeline of the San Gabriel and Tehachapi Mountains. Mostly bypassed by 1933 with the coming of the three-lane "Alternate Ridge Route" which would later be part of U.S. Highway 99 (converted to a four-lane expressway by 1947), a thirty-mile long, twenty-foot-wide (48km x 6m) stretch of the original Ridge Route between Castaic just off Interstate 5 and Highway 138 in Gorman is paved and is still passable. Thanks to the efforts of retired telephone engineer Harrison Scott, roughly seventeen miles (27 km) of that fragment was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Mr. Scott is also the author of Ridge Route, The Road That United California, one of the most detailed reference works available about the highway.
Features
The complete road from Castaic to Gorman had 697 curves totalling 39,441 degrees - or roughly 110 full circles - with few guard rails or turnouts. Curbs along the sides of the steepest drops kept cars from sliding into the ravines and a speed limit of only 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) was strictly enforced. One section, popularly referred to as "The Grapevine" (then, as now) was not named for the winding path taken by the road as many believe, but for the wild Cimmaron grapevines which early Spanish explorers and later 19th Century wagoneers had to hack through. It was dubbed Cañada de Las Uvas, or, in English, Canyon of The Grapes in 1772 by Don Pedro Fages. Don Pedro was a Spanish officer, acting governor of Alta California and the first white man to travel through the area. These wild grapevines still exist on the hill west of Interstate 5 next to a part of old US 99.
Other named features included Swede's Cut, the Newhall Tunnel and Horseshoe Bend overlooking Liebre Gulch. Parts of the route ran alongside and overlooked Castaic Creek. Horseshoe Bend was the first paved stretch of the Ridge Route, but was bypassed early in the highway's history and is no longer passable. Except for 110-foot-deep (33.5 m) Swede's Cut which was completed in 1915 and carved through solid rock with the help of steam-powered equipment, the entire route was graded by horse- and mule-drawn scrapers. While Swede's Cut is the largest cut on the entire route, it was cut extremely narrow in an effort to save money. As a result, the surrounding rock has held up somewhat poorly.
Today
The route's present end at Highway 138 was the site of the Butterfield Stage stop between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. The remainder of the Ridge Route as well as the town site of Grapevine were covered up by U.S. 99/Interstate 5 with a few fragments of broken pavement still visible from the new highway. What is today a fairly brief drive of less than 30 minutes on Interstate 5 takes an average of three hours plus sightseeing stops on the Ridge Route, even in a modern automobile. So narrow was the Ridge Route in places that there was just enough room for two cars of the period to pass. Inclement weather, including snowstorms at the higher elevations and mudslides during the rainy season make the drive extremely risky, especially since no services remain.
Driving the Ridge Route
To get to the existing fragment of the route from Los Angeles, take Interstate 5 heading north and exit Parker Road at Castaic, go right at top of the offramp, go right on Ridge Route and follow the road. At Templin Highway, disregard the sign which says "not a through road." Templin Highway was built in 1968 during construction of Interstate 5 as an access road to the Castaic Power Plant, forcing a partial reroute of both the Ridge Route and Highway 99.
Navigating on the Ridge Route demands safe driving habits. Potholes, loose sand, debris, remnants of mudslides and rockslides and many of the aforementioned 697 curves await today's traveler. The road is not being maintained at present due to lack of funds, although its historical status makes it eligible for available future funding.
None of the businesses that once dotted the route remain, but tourists can catch a glimpse of the occasional wall or foundation of a long-lost building. Many of the buildings were intentionally bulldozed by the U.S. Forest Service in the 1950s and 1960s per their fire protection policy and because they were used as flophouses by transients and later by hippies, resulting in unsanitary conditions and additional fire danger. Remains of the buildings can be glimpsed in the canyons.
Notable stops
One of the best-preserved ruins on the Ridge Route is the foundation of the Tumble Inn at about the halfway point of the trip. It is a native stone structure that still bears the words "TUMBLE INN" carved in one of its steps. A 1928 motor tour book described the Tumble Inn thus: Rooms, dbl. $2, meals, gas, free camp space, water and rest rooms. A small resort of far-reaching vista. The same could be said of the view today since it extends to the mountains in practically every direction. However, almost nothing remains of the Ridge Route's finest accomodation, Sandberg's Summit Hotel, which burned down in 1961. Sandberg's was notable for its many amenities, including both running water and indoor plumbing which made it the stop of choice for the well-heeled traveler. Sandberg's was also the stuff of road lore as unsubstantiated rumors of illegal gambling and even prostitution abounded.
Though a great deal of the route had been widened and paved in asphalt by the mid-1920s, much of the 1919 concrete pavement remains intact. In some areas, Model T tire tracks can still be seen, left decades ago in the still-soft concrete.