Around the Bend, Old Road May Find New Life

A radio traffic report suggested an old-fashioned alternative to blocked freeway lanes on Interstate 5 north of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“You might try the old Ridge Route to save some time,” the announcer recommended one afternoon late last month.

Seventy years after being abandoned by the state, the historic mountain-hopping roadway that first connected Northern and Southern California is again starting to command the public’s respect. And attention.

The twisty, 36-mile Ridge Route has won a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Last year a 326-page book chronicling its past was published. Tours are being led along its length, and a group of four-wheel-drive enthusiasts has adopted it and is installing a series of historic plaques on its ridge tops.

More significantly, huge new residential communities may soon bookend the Ridge Route. At its southern end, in Castaic, construction of 4,273 homes has begun. Development of 23,000 homes is planned for its northern end, near the town of Gorman.

Still, most travelers racing along I-5 aren’t aware of the Ridge Route. Or that the interstate is the third in a series of north-south highways that have been cut through the rugged confluence of three mountain ranges -- the San Gabriels, Tehachapis and Sierra Madres.

Motorists can view remaining stretches of the old four-lane California 99 that have not been covered over by Pyramid Lake on the west side of the freeway. But they cannot see the two-lane ribbon of the original Ridge Route that is hidden among the mountaintops on the east side of the interstate.

Horse-drawn scrapers carved out the 20-foot-wide Ridge Route in 1914. The road was laid out so it would zigzag along ridge tops to minimize grading.

Historians say the pioneering north-south route put an end to decades of debate over whether California should be divided into two states, with the isolating mountains serving as the dividing line.

A faster, three-lane California 99 (later widened to four lanes) replaced the Ridge Route In 1933. In the 1970s, today’s eight-lane I-5 was completed to replace that highway.

Forgotten by nearly everyone, the Ridge Route languished until a dozen years ago, when retired Torrance telephone company engineer Harrison Scott decided to take a drive on it.

Scott, then 18, had chanced upon the route in 1955 while driving his first car. In 1991 he was traveling on I-5 with his then-teenage son, James, when the youth commented on the difficulty of crossing the mountains by car.

“If you think this is tough, you should see what the real Ridge Route looks like,” Scott replied, pulling off the freeway to show his son the old road.

The pair discovered that the meandering mountain route was still intact and passable. But it was nearly covered in places by brush and rockslides. The 90-minute trip prompted Scott to begin a one-man crusade to preserve the roadway.

He worked with Angeles National Forest officials to win the National Register listing in 1997. Later, Scott used the research he did as part of the designation process in writing 2002’s “Ridge Route -- The Road That United California.” Sold at various independent bookstores and on the Internet, it is now in its third printing.

These days the Ridge Route is easily drivable, although there are potholes in asphalt laid in the 1920s to widen some of its 697 curves. Asphalt also covers some sections of concrete, which was originally poured 4 1/2inches thick over rebar spaced 18 inches apart.

Scott and others are working to maintain the roadway in what he characterizes as “a state of arrested decay.”

A nonprofit group, the Ridge Route Preservation Organization, has determined that the state deeded the road to Los Angeles County in 1934 after Highway 99 opened. Organization members are seeking to persuade the county to maintain the route and post speed limit warning signs on it.

Warren Minner, a Bakersfield civil engineer, has studied the roadway and calculates that potholes could be patched and scenic turnouts spruced up for about $60,000. After that, yearly maintenance would cost about $20,000. The initial repairs would only take about three weeks, Minner said Tuesday.

Scott said contributions from private sources such as corporations might be available to cover those costs. After that, federal money might be sought for safety railings, sign posting and construction of overlook parking areas, he said.

“My idea is to turn it into a federal scenic highway. Right now, the [U.S.] Forest Service is only doing limited maintenance, enough to keep it as a fire road,” he said this week. “That old road demonstrates early engineering concepts that are gone today. But it’s still there, and it needs to be preserved.”

Scott occasionally takes a shovel and digs out clogged Ridge Route culverts himself. Without attention, the road is in danger of washing out in some places over the next 10 years, he said.

Traffic on the route, meantime, continues to grow -- and not just because its southern segment between Templin Highway and Lake Hughes Road is sometimes designated an alternative route by traffic reporters.

Guided tours take history buffs along the roadway, pointing out the sites of auto camps, garages and restaurants that were operated in the mountains for 1920s-era travelers.

The four-wheel-drive group is constructing stone monuments that will eventually include photographs and descriptions of such places as the Tumble Inn, where stone-wall remnants of an eatery and motor court are still visible about 22 miles north of Castaic.

The road draws swarms of bicyclists and motorcyclists on weekends. Occasionally, even tractor-trailers are seen lumbering up the hill, said Castaic resident Jim Shinkle,- whose home in the new Northlake subdivision is next to the Ridge Route. The roadway has been widened to six lanes as it passes through Shinkle’s neighborhood.

The first few hundred houses in what will eventually be a 1,700-acre master-planned community have been built in Northlake. The area is earmarked for 4,273 single- and multifamily residences.

Farther up the mountainside, Northlake Elementary School is being completed and will open Sept. 7 with room for 700 pupils.

“I’m sure the plan is to continue up the Ridge Route, to open it up and say hello,” school library-media-technology specialist Velma Glick said Monday.

At the route’s north end, expect to say hello in 2007 to the first of what could be 23,000 new families.

A partnership that includes Tejon Ranch Co. has filed plans for a 11,700-acre community along California 138.

It could take 25 years for all the homes to be built, however.

Those who appreciate the Ridge Route hope it will still be there to connect the two big dots that will mark the new communities on future roadmaps.