The Old Road : Though Today Only Remnants Remain, the Route Retains a Silent Dignity and Its Links to the Past

Farther north, in the Central Valley, it’s called “The Old 99.” The words are synonymous with the death of root beer stands and the return of towns like Pixley to the rural background from which they once stood out as stopping places on California’s central thoroughfare.

From just south of Bakersfield to the heart of Sacramento, 99 was reduced to the status of a regional highway when Interstate 5 to the west opened in 1970.

At that, 99 remains a yeoman of a highway, laden with the traffic of the Central Valley’s produce on its way to market and uncommonly spacious as a route between such sparsely populated villages as Famosa and Selma.

No such urgent a purpose exists today for the remnants of the highway where it once fed cars from Los Angeles to grueling slopes of the infamous Ridge on the farther edge of the Santa Clarita Valley.

Still, a certain dignity attaches to the road.

They call it “The Old Road.” In truth, it isn’t that old, and it isn’t a complete road, either.

Although the route reputedly derives from the trading trails of the Alliklik Indians and later the Butterfield Stage line to the Central Valley, the pavement dates to a recent era when William Mulholland was building an aqueduct to bring water to Los Angeles.

The Ridge Route, as it was then called, opened as a gravel road in 1913, received its first coat of paving in 1919 and was refashioned in 1933 as a three-lane highway and christened 99.

In the 1950s, 99 was widened into a four-lane expressway in an engineering accomplishment that straightened many of the Ridge Route’s 347 curves, eliminating eight miles from the drive.

Highway 99 was rebuilt again in the late 1960s, then became Interstate 5, the road that is there today.

Pieces of the various old roads that weren’t eclipsed by the newer ones were left behind to become what are called “frontage roads” in the language of highway signs.

The Old Road begins as the continuation of San Fernando Road at the city-county line near the junction of the Antelope Valley Freeway in the mountains northwest of Sylmar.

The two-lane road is the choice of some commuters who hope to pick up a few miles per hour on days when traffic is bogged down over the crest that drops off into the Santa Clarita Valley.

It’s also the only feasible route for those who intend to walk from Newhall toward the San Fernando Valley, as one suntanned, bearded man carrying a backpack and pulling a hand-drawn cart full of goods was recently. He said his destination was the Antelope Valley Freeway underpass.

Here on The Old Road the attention is eerily divided between the pastoral picture of native chaparral on one side and the blasting exhaust of diesel trucks decelerating down the grade.

A few people live here in an old Ridge Route motel now converted into a horse property. Beside its white fences stands an old white sign in the shape of a cowboy hat, the insignia of the forgotten motel.

Down the road are an Arabian horse ranch and a kennel.

Then, after only three miles, The Old Road ends abruptly at Calgrove Boulevard. On the other side of a freeway underpass, Wiley Canyon Road continues into Newhall and Valencia.

The map shows the The Old Road picking up again at McBean Parkway. Drivers know better. There’s a ditch falling off from the traffic barrier at the end of McBean Parkway. At the bottom a rutted path continues through a cow pasture toward Valencia Boulevard, where a red-and-white sign on a gate gives a forceful warning to stay away.

Perspective Changes

There The Old Road resumes as a back way to Magic Mountain and from there, a quiet country road opening the eyes to green pastures and quiet rolling hills that somehow are invisible from the vantage of the multilane highway only a few feet away.

Farther along, at Halsey Canyon Road, the Stars and Bars of Dixie fly, symbol of the Dixxie Diesel Truck Stop, where truckers really do pull in to get fuel, buy caps with funny slogans written on them and sack out for the night in a boxy stucco motel painted red, white and blue.

The flag has no meaning, said Sora Walker of Republic Oil Corp., which runs the station.

“It’s just a fun gimmick because you think of truck drivers as being Southern,” Walker said.

Nearby, a new development of red-tile roofed houses portends changes for this back-country mood.

What the Future Holds

Realtor Nate Olsen, who owns that corner, feels the change coming.

“What the highest and best use will be, we’re not totally sure,” Olsen said. “But we hope in the near future to do something.” That’s still in the future, though.

Today, The Old Road is still about the past.

It continues past another diesel stop and the weary-looking Newhall Elks Lodge and then to a little yellow house that has a pig sty to one side.

An accommodating man named Mario Mercado answers the door there and tells what he knows about the house where he grew up.

Once it was the firehouse, he said. And when a new one was built a few miles down the road, Newhall Land & Farming Co. bought the property for company housing.

‘Pretty Neat’ for Children

His father, Antonio Mercado, who worked at the Valencia Golf Course, moved in and raised Mario and his sister, Gloria, now a Castaic Union School District board of education member.

They watched the freeway being built and played with the relics of the fire station, Mario said.

“It was pretty neat when we were kids. We had all the garages where they stored the trucks, the big water outlets.”

Mario said his father retired nine years ago but still rents the house from Newhall Land & Farming Co. and raises pigs as a hobby.

Road Unceremoniously Ends

A short distance beyond Mercado’s house, the Ridge begins and The Old Road ends unceremoniously near another new housing development called Hidden Lakes, where freshly graded banks are just beginning to sprout a crop of gazanias.

But, if old roads are your thing, you can still proceed.

On the other side of the interstate the old 1919 Ridge Route can be found just where it climbs into the first of those 347 turns.

They say you can drive it all the way to Gorman.