A very good piece of driving road about to disappear forever in SOCAL...

[Joe Schmoe]

A piece of HWY 138 from the 15 freeway to Lake Silverwood and beyond is being realigned and will go away forever. I read that they had approved the work but I had no idea it had begun and had gotten so far. Looking at Google Maps newest imagery for all I know it's already gone. They've already wiped out the wicked hairpin. If you happen to be in the area of the 15 freeway in the Cajon pass I'd hit it one last time for old time's sake. It's a very tight technical rollercoaster piece of road. Not as long as some of the best roads around but very very good. If you decide to make a drive out of it (the disappearing section is only 1 mile) continue on past Silverwood up to Crestline. The bit that leads you up from the lake is also very good. Be careful - both sections can be tricky. Stay safe out there.

https://goo.gl/maps/tqaWhHECSEo

 

[M-Sport fan]

When you say "go away" concerning roads in Cali, does that mean that they plow up all of the tarmac/road bed and return the surface to soil/dirt, and plant tress/vegetation over it, or just block it off with impassable/immovable barricades, and leave it to deteriorate on it's own?

 

[Joe Schmoe]

Funny you should ask that. At the risk of being very boring for a car site the answer I believe is "it depends". I think more recently the asphalt is chopped up and hauled out. But it's funny because if you look at those many dirt roads pictured in Google maps a couple of those are the very first viable roads ever built through that pass, dating back to the late 1800s (which isn't old for PA, but IS old for CA - think old west cowboys and indians) to move goods via mule train and horses to and from the growing cities and mines in the desert and mountains. Those first dirt roads followed native american foot paths in that creekbed and were eventually travelled by the earliest Mormon settlers. I've explored the ruins of an old toll house associated with that road, which did suffer from attacks from native americans and there a lot of layers of history in there, some of the stuff I ran across I've never found mention of in historical descriptions.

That area has a number of other roads that have been built, destroyed or moved a number of times keeping pace with the the rise and fall of the need for water and coal for steam trains, the older practice of hauling livestock on trains and keeping up with the the evolution of the automobile. This is a spot near there that has seen at least four alignments over the span of the 1900s: https://goo.gl/maps/wikMjYgMk4o

And that concludes our uninteresting history lesson for road geeks.

 

[M-Sport fan]

^^^NOT AT ALL "uninteresting"!!

Most of the roads around here are also built on Native American foot paths/trails, as were also the stage coach trails which ran between the major cities of that era.

Yes, late 1700s isn't even considered 'old' in this area.
The mule tow paths along the Delaware River Canal System (and the canal itself) are pretty much untouched from when they were first built and opened in 1832, and those are about a mile from my front door.
I am about 5-7 miles, where I sit right now, from Washington's Crossing State Park, where a definitive part of WORLD history happened some 242 years ago.