Ridge Route
The Ridge Route, officially the Castaic–Tejon Route and colloquially known as the Grapevine, was a two-lane highway between Los Angeles County and Kern County, California, United States. Opened in 1915 and paved with concrete between 1917 and 1921, the road was the first paved highway directly linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley over the Tejon Pass and the rugged Sierra Pelona Mountains ridge south of Gorman. Much of the old road runs through the Angeles National Forest, and passes many historical landmarks, including the National Forest Inn, Reservoir Summit, Kelly's Half Way Inn, Tumble Inn, and Sandberg's Summit Hotel. North of the forest, the Ridge Route passed through Deadman's Curve before ending at Grapevine.
The road was originally built as a state highway, a segment of the unsigned Legislative Route 4, before it became signed as part of U.S. Route 99 in 1926. The road was then bypassed by the three-lane Ridge Route Alternate to handle increased traffic and remove curves; the Alternate in Los Angeles County was completed in 1933, and Kern County line to Grapevine in 1936. The roadway was widened to a four-lane expressway in 1953 and replaced by an eight-lane freeway, Interstate 5 in 1960-70. The portion of the road in the Angeles National Forest was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, by the efforts of retired engineer Harrison Scott. Much of the road has been closed by the U.S. Forest Service; other remnants are used by local traffic.
Route description
The Ridge Route was officially the Castaic–Tejon Route. The official limits of the Ridge Route, as built in the 1910s, were State Route 126 at Castaic Junction and the bottom of the grade at Grapevine. Until 1930 the road from San Fernando to Castaic Junction ran through the Newhall Tunnel at San Fernando Pass and along San Fernando Road, Magic Mountain Parkway and Feedmill Road to a former bridge over the Santa Clara River. A 1930 bypass of the tunnel and Newhall through Weldon Canyon is now part of The Old Road.From Castaic Junction north to Castaic the Ridge Route has been largely buried by the Ridge Route Alternate and Interstate 5. At Castaic the Ridge Route Alternate turned northwest from the old road, now the intersection of Castaic Road and Neely Street. The first piece of Ridge Route Road out of Castaic was realigned as recently as the late 1990s when the North Lake housing development was built. The road begins to climb after passing North Lake; a portion was straightened in 1924 and now is next to the southbound lanes of I-5. In this area, known as the Five-Mile Grade, the four-lane Ridge Route Alternate became the northbound lanes of I-5, while the added four-lane alignment, built to the east, had lower grades and became the southbound lanes to cut down on runaway trucks. Two bridges were built to allow traffic to cross to the left side. Near the north end of this area, the Ridge Route curves away from the newer bypass. The road enters the Angeles National Forest about south of Templin Highway, with the Forest Service road designation 8N04.
Establishments in the forest included the National Forest Inn, Kelly's Half Way Inn, Tumble Inn, and Sandberg's Summit Hotel.
The National Forest Inn was on the west side of the road. A popular place, composed of white clapboard buildings, it was described in a 1932 highway beautification pamphlet as "the sort of filling station that gets into a national forest and is no addition thereto". On October 14, 1932, a fire began in the garage, and took over a day to put out. When the Ridge Route Alternate bypassed the site to the west, the inn was not rebuilt, and all that remains are concrete steps.
About north of the National Forest Inn is Serpentine Drive, where the road curves around the sides of hills as it climbs out of a low point in the route. North of the curves, the road passes through Swede's Cut, also called Big Cut, Culebra Excavation, or Castaic Cut. The cut was the largest on the route, with a depth of.
Reservoir Summit, also called Reservoir Hill, is above sea level. The Reservoir Summit Café was a popular high-class restaurant on the east side of the road, closed in the late 1920s; the foundation remains. The summit was named after a now-dry reservoir, one of three probably built for the concrete used in paving the road. Kelly's Half Way Inn was roughly halfway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, on a small knoll with a single tree on the east side of the road; all that remains is remnants of the foundation. The Tumble Inn, later Mountain View Lodge, was on the west side of the road, and closed when the Ridge Route Alternate opened in 1933. Steps, including the top step with "TUMBLE INN" in the concrete, and a retaining wall remain.
The Sandberg's Summit Hotel, later Sandberg's Lodge, was just north of Liebre Summit, the highest point on the road, at above sea level. The hotel was built in 1914 and served travelers from the opening of the road in 1915. Built of logs, it was a high-class hotel. The place, which had become a ceramics factory, burned down on April 29, 1961, from a fire started by the new owner—who was converting it into a "camp-type operation" for underprivileged children—burning trash in the fireplace. The lease from the U.S. Forest Service was canceled in 1963, and only portions of the foundation and a rock wall remain. The name "Sandberg" is still used by the National Weather Service for an automated weather station a short distance to the north at Pine Canyon Road. Pine Canyon Road marks the end of the forest and the beginning of county maintenance, and CR N2 uses the old Ridge Route alignment to reach SR 138 near Quail Lake.
The Ridge Route crosses the West Branch California Aqueduct with SR 138, splitting to the northwest on Gorman Post Road. It rejoins the path of I-5 at Gorman, and, from Gorman to the end at Grapevine, most of the old road has been covered by the Ridge Route Alternate or I-5. The path of the Ridge Route is now named Peace Valley Road and Lebec Road, passing over Tejon Pass and past Lebec and Fort Tejon. Past Fort Tejon the route descends through Grapevine Canyon to Grapevine. The best-known curve on the road, Deadman's Curve or Death Curve is visible from Digier Road on the west side of I-5. The next part of the old road that still exists is near the bottom of the grade, where a number of curves brought the road down to Grapevine. The original plan was to build the road nearer to the center of the canyon, but a March 1914 flood destroyed the work, and the grading was redone higher up. Deadman's Curve and the Grapevine loops were both bypassed by the Ridge Route Alternate, which was built directly over most of the old road in this area. At Grapevine the land flattens out, and the road north of Grapevine was the longest straight section of road in the state——in 1926. Most of this road lies under I-5 and SR 99, but the southernmost piece in Grapevine was bypassed by the Alternate west of it, and is now between southbound and northbound lanes of I-5.
History
Before the Ridge Route
Before the Ridge Route, roads between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley were less direct. El Camino Real, the first major road in California, connected Los Angeles and the missions, presidios and settlements with San Francisco and Sonoma. The San Joaquin Valley route split from the El Camino Real at present-day Universal City, the western leg running along the Pacific Coast and coastal valleys and the eastern El Camino Viejo, via the San Joaquin Valley to San Antonio, now East Oakland.Another route between Los Angeles and Bakersfield followed the southern approach to the Ridge Route to Saugus, but took a longer route between Saugus and Gorman, heading northeast through the San Francisquito Canyon to the Antelope Valley and west to Gorman. The rest of the route, from Gorman toward Bakersfield via the Tejon Pass, followed the same path as the Ridge Route.
The Butterfield Overland Stage, the first overland mail service to California, went from Tipton, Missouri and Memphis to San Francisco via Los Angeles. From October 1858, when the first stage passed through Tejon Pass, until April 1861, the route was identical to El Camino Viejo, running via San Francisquito Canyon. In order to keep the stages from running directly northwest from San Bernardino and bypassing Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors spent $8000 in 1858 to deepen the cut—later Beale's Cut—at San Fernando Pass, south of Saugus and Newhall. The path followed by the stages was changed to pass along the Pacific Coast from Los Angeles in April 1861.
Similarly, the residents of the City of Los Angeles approved the expenditure of a good deal of money towards the building of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had originally planned to bypass the city. The line to San Francisco, including the San Fernando Tunnel through San Fernando Pass, was completed on September 5, 1876. The railroad's route between Saugus and Bakersfield was even longer than that of El Camino Viejo and the Butterfield Overland Stage, heading east through Soledad Canyon before turning north via Palmdale to Mojave and northwest over Tehachapi Pass.
In the 1910s several power companies built lines through the area. The General Pipe Line Company completed an oil pipeline connecting the San Joaquin Valley's Midway-Sunset Oil Field with the port at San Pedro in 1913. Its alignment followed the Ridge Route north of Gorman and south of Reservoir Summit, a longer distance than any of the earlier transportation routes, but from Gorman south to the present location of Pyramid Lake, where it turned east to Reservoir Summit, it roughly followed the later Ridge Route Alternate. That same year, the Midway Gas Company opened a natural gas line, and the Pacific Light and Power Company opened a power line, both staying fairly close to the entire Ridge Route.
The two general routes followed by the Butterfield Overland Stage and the Southern Pacific Railroad—known respectively as the Tejon Pass Route and the Tehachapi or Midway Route—were the main automobile routes between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley around the start of the 20th century. The State Bureau of Highways recommended in 1895 that a more direct route be built to shorten this distance. A bond issue was approved in 1909 and 1910 to build a state highway system, including the Ridge Route. The new California Highway Commission was unable to raise funds in the East, but Los Angeles again contributed funds to ensure that construction would go forward.
These routes all shared the roadway south of Saugus, which was generally flat but included the crossing of San Fernando Pass. As discussed earlier, this was deepened at the county's expense in 1858. The California State Legislature authorized a turnpike in 1861, and it was completed in 1863, then owned by Edward Fitzgerald Beale. The cut, which came to be known as Beale's Cut, was deepened by Beale, and lowered once more by the county in 1904. To improve the crossing, the county bypassed the cut with the narrow Newhall Tunnel, for railroad traffic only, which opened in October 1910.