My Interest In The Roads

I'm not sure I can point to any one thing that sparked my interest in the old roads.  I'm enough of a history buff that, whenever I fall in love with a place, I want to know what it looked like 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 500 years ago.  Who was there before me?  How did they live?  Was the area less built-up or more?  All of these questions jostled around in my mind beginning with my first couple of visits to the Park.  If there's any one thing that really got my juices flowing on this one, though, it started with our first winter visit to the Valley.

We were in California to visit some friends in Palo Alto (in a particularly lovely December) and decided to run out to Yosemite for a few days.  That particularly lovely December was producing such particularly lovely weather the day we headed out there that, as we approached the final cut-off where I had to make the decision to enter the Park on CA-120 (at 6000 feet elevation...the most direct route from San Francisco and the way we normally go) or take the less direct route through Coulterville and enter on CA-140 (at 4000 feet elevation), I figured we'd get there that much faster via our usual route.  All was fine until we started making the final ascent.  We'd already climbed enough that the temperature had dropped from the mid-to-upper 70's down to around 60.  Our car had an outside temperature indicator.  As we began to climb the final 2000 feet of elevation, I wasn't surprised to see it start reading in the 50's.  As it dropped in to the 40's, I was none too amused but not alarmed.  I was definitely not happy to see it drop in to the 30's at the same time the sky was becoming overcast and getting concerned as it hovered in the low 30's and we started to get some light precipitation.

Finally, we got to the entrance station where, they kindly informed us, the road was closed due to white-out conditions ahead.  No problem, they said, here's the detour route...it's only another 70 miles!  Now, it's not that I think the area around Yosemite is awful...far from it.  In fact, once the temporarily northbound CA-120 turns east at Yosemite Junction and enters the historic old village of Chinese Camp, things get quite lovely.  This particular detour (which we've since done intentionally on one occasion) takes you through the historic town of Coulterville...starting place of the first completed stage coach road in to the Valley.  Also, the weather got really nice again as we dropped back down to 4000 feet.  However, a man on a mission is a man on a mission and I was anxious for my first experience of Yosemite Valley in the winter.

By the time we got in to the Valley, it was too late that day to do much other than check in to our room at the Lodge, drive around the Valley floor a bit, get some dinner and settle in for the night.  With  most of the higher elevations were iffier bets (both on foot or by car) than I cared to take, we used this as an excuse to examine more of the Valley than we normally get to see.  On day 1, we did what some hiking books call the West Valley Loop.

Starting at the Bridalveil Falls parking lot, you head east where you climb over the terminal moraine deposited by the final advance of the glacier which once (actually, repeatedly) filled Yosemite Valley.

After crossing over the moraine, the trail descends in to a beautiful, dense forest where little snow actually made it to the ground.

Eventually, you come back out to the Southside Drive and cross over El Capitan bridge to get to the North side of the Valley floor.  As we approached the bridge, we engaged in a short staring match with a coyote out for a stroll (a bit hard to make out in this shot but look just below the railing on the far side of the bridge):

He soon trotted off and we continued our trek.  A few miles in to our hike now, we took a quick lunch break in the woods below El Capitan

While Lonna rested, I did a bit of exploring.  The trail starts to get pretty confused here as everything from a short logging road to hiking trails to various water run-off channels all cross at various angles.  Looking around, I was intrigued by what seemed to be the faint outlines of a broad trail:

I began to follow it.  I quickly lost it as it went under the snow cover in that clearing up ahead.  A bit of poking around, however, and I found what appeared to be the continuation:

Turns out I was wrong (this is actually just a small gulley cut by year-after-year of water run-off) but, climbing through those trees I saw this gentle curve onto a long-ago paved road up the side of the Valley:

Now, OK, call me geeky but this was a pretty exciting moment for me!  Here was a part of Yosemite's past which I had read about but never thought to see (I had read enough to know the road used to be there but not enough to know it was still accessible).  In a moment, I was transported back in time.  I walked a short ways up the road, up until I encountered the first bit of downed trees and overgrowth.  Lonna was waiting back at our rest stop and I wasn't really dressed for a trek so I simply soaked in the excitement and made a note to get back here as soon as possible.

If any one thing kicked off my fascination with the old stage roads, it was this chance encounter.  Back in the Yosemite Visitor's Center later that day, I came across Irene Paden and Margaret Schlichtmann's 1955 book The Big Oak Flat Road, a brilliantly detailed account of the history of this road, the people who lived along its route and wonderful maps showing the old route in relationship to the current Big Oak Flat Road.  Now I was hooked.

As is often the case when one throws oneself in to some pursuit, further connections started to pop up as if by magic.  In addition to a number of other books about the old roads (a particularly good overview of the roads is in the article "The Great Yosemite Roadbuilding Race" in vol. 2 of Hank Johnston's Yosemite's Yesterdays), I discovered that Tom Bopp, the brilliantly talented and entertaining pianist who plays at Yosemite's historic Wawona Hotel most nights of the year, is not only a Yosemite historian but has a particular interest in, yes, old stage roads in to Yosemite Valley (although his primary focus is on the old Wawona Road).  These sorts of chance encounters continue and, years later, I continue to come across the old roads in unexpected places and associations.

Would I have begun this fascination with these routes were it not for stumbling across something which looked like it might once have been a road on a rainy, overcast day?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  I do know that, nowadays, a visit to Yosemite is more likely to find me tracking down segments of these old roads rather than frequenting the more popular (and crowded) trails (although I still do my share of those!).

In coming entries, I'll go in to more detail about my hikes up the various roads, what I know about the parts of yet to get to and tips on how to find the roads if you're interested.