Travelling the Backroads

Our adventure began with us leaving Walnut Creek, California and heading northeast towards Sacramento with an ultimate destination of Aurora, Colorado – located just south of Denver. Because there’s no rush and no reason to spend our days riding the 8-lane slab of Highway 80, we looked for alternate routes – which quickly turned into a little history lesson on transportation in the US.

CA Route 160
The first leg of our journey was 160 North. 160 begins in Antioch, arcs high over the San Juaquin river on the Antioch Bridge and crosses the always-gusty Sherman Island before reaching the Sacramento River on the other side. From there until you reach the city of Sacramento the two-lane road winds along the levee walls, periodically crossing back and forth across the river on 1920s-era steel bridges. The scenery is almost always lush farmland on one side and winding river on the other, punctuated by small towns. It was our first time on the road and, had we not been excited about the miles to come, would have made a fantastic, meandering ride. Every few miles we seemed to come across small historic towns and were offered the chance to enjoy some local farm fresh produce or pick up some bait to fish the Sacramento river.

Hwy 160 circa 1916

The levee road we travelled along existed as early as 1910, though it was little more than a dirt trail in generally poor condition. In 1922, the road was improved and included as the western-most leg – running from Sacramento to Stockton – of the Victory Highway. The levee route through the river district was chosen to “impress [the motorist] with the enormous productive resources of this state as well as supply him with an unmatched scenic drive” – which it does. 160 runs for almost 50 miles and gradually becomes more and more urban in the last few miles until it finally intersects Highway 50, which we hopped on heading east.

Highway 50 – The Lonliest Road in America
We originally chose 50 because it was the most direct parallel to Highway 80 that wasn’t 80 – but a little more research revealed some great history. The modern Highway 50 starts in Sacramento, CA (right about where we hopped on) and runs east all the way to Ocean City, Maryland – a distance of 3008 miles. Coming out of Sacramento, the road is relatively non-descript until you start to approach Lake Tahoe at which point it winds dramatically up into the Sierras, peaking at Echo Summit (7,382 ft) before dropping back down into Lake Tahoe on a narrow two lane road with a dramatic cliff’s-edge drop inches past the guardrails.

The road goes straight though South Lake Tahoe and you know you’ve crossed into Nevada when you hit the casinos, which start inches past the State Line. The road continues east to Carson City and once you leave that town, you finally start to get a taste of the isolation to follow.

In 1926, Life magazine declared the Nevada stretch of 50 to be the “Lonliest Road in America” – with good reason. From Fallon, Nevada (just 60 miles past Carson City) to the Utah Border (a distance of about 320 miles) the road narrows from 4 lanes to 2 and you pass exactly 3 towns: Austin, Eureka, and Ely (pronounced “eel-y”). Austin has a population of about 340, Eureka (including the surrounding area) is home to a little over 1000, and Ely seems like a metropolis in comparison, with 4000 residents. Rather than take offense at the slight, Nevada jumped on the term as a marketing slogan and began promoting 50 as the Lonliest Road, selling “I Survived 50″ t-shirts and creating Highway 50 “Passports” which offered motorists the opportunity to get a stamp at each of the 6 small towns along 50 – proving they had “survived” the journey.

We didn’t hear about the book until we stopped off in Eureka and had a great chat with a woman who worked at the local gas station. Originally from Denver, she frequently visited her sister in Ely and decided to move out when she retired. She said we had actually come through at a great time as they had had an exceptionally wet summer so far and the hills were much greener than usual. It was hot when we rode through in August, but she said that the year-round winds (which had been buffeting us the entire morning) create severe winters with significant snow drifts. We had been confused about the relatively common snow-chain installation sites we were coming across in what appeared to be a desert – but she said it was not at all uncommon for the highway to become impassible several times during the winter. It’s easy to forget that although the terrain is flat, Eureka is actually 6,500 feet above sea level, making it part of the High Plains region of the US (and making us High Plains Drifters). She was the one to inform us about the Highway 50 Passport and gave us the “Eureka” stamp, but like traveling amateurs, we neglected to have it stamped again once we hit Ely.

The scenery on the Nevada stretch of 50 is equal parts stunning and monotonous (if that’s possible). The vistas are gorgeous but after hours of straight-line miles on the road, the do tend to blend together. The route is punctuated by a dozen or so minor mountain ranges that provide a gradually approaching break in the prarie until one rises to the top of the climb and is greeted by… a beautiful, slightly elevated vista of the 40 or 50 straight-as-an-arrow miles to the next range. Luckily, a little historical research gives one a number of things to consider while crossing those large distances.

The Lincoln Highway
The vast majority of the modern Hwy 50 cross-country route was originally known as the Lincoln Highway. Dedicated in 1913 it was the first ever coast-to-coast road in America. It was made of up a number of smaller, existing, regional roads but was the first time that the nation was bridged by one single, continuous marked road. The highway in the early days consisted of mostly “improved” roads, meaning they were gravel, not just dirt. This was a minor but significant improvement as dirt roads are typically dust storms in the summer and mud bogs in the winter. The Lincoln route was marked by large capital “L”s painted on telegraph poles along the route, or by more permanent concrete markers which were erected in 1928 – some of which still remain and one of which we got to see in Eureka. The Lincoln Highway is often billed as the first national memorial to Abraham Lincoln (predating the Lincoln Monument in Washington DC) which it may be, but it did not actually start as a federal memorial project. The push to built the road was started by early automotive entrepreneurs along with government officials who seized on the name as a way to promote interest in the project.

Of course the historical background is interesting, but a topic that inevitably comes up on any long distance, cross country trip (at least for Anjel and I) is imagining the pioneers who travelled the same routes almost 200 years ago. A covered wagon probably averaged less than 5 miles an hour – which means that the distance we travel now in one hour, cruising across the desert at 80 mph represented 16 hours of wagon travel. As I traced the history of the route farther and farther back I found, in a Memento-like progression, that the birth of the road could actually be traced all the way back to the Oregon Trail.

The Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail was used by thousands of traders, trappers and settlers as the primary route of westward expansion. The trail stretched about 2,000 miles across a northernly route though what would eventually become the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon. The route evolved over time and a significant fork known as the California Trail developed, spliting off from the Oregon trail around Wyoming or Idaho and heading down through Utah into Nevada towards California and what would become known as the central valley’s Gold Country. As the route developed, the town of Salt Lake grew to become a major settlement along the trail and common stop for repairs and resupply.

The California Trail out of Salt Lake City took a nothernly route across Nevada, specifically avoiding the numerous mountain ranges to the south. Because of the relative flatness of the trail, it would eventually become the basic route used for the first transcontinental railroad. The modern highway 80 also follows this same basic route.

In 1855 a man named Howard Egan, looking for a more direct path through Nevada to California from Salt Lake City, scouted what would become known as the Central Overland Trail. The trail was counterintuitive in that it went directly through the mountain ranges that earlier explorers had worked so had to avoid, but Egan discovered that there were a series of mountain passes that aligned to provide almost a direct path through the region. It did involve the traversing of several small ranges and two deserts, but it was hundreds of miles shorter than the California Trail and as a result became a major artery to the west.

It was this route that was chosen by the Pony Express for their trips west, it was this route that was chosen for the first transcontinental telegraph system (ending the Pony Express), and it was this route that was chosen for the Lincoln Highway, which eventually became Highway 50.

Which brings us back to today.

There were times on our trip when the road and scenery were stunning, and there were plenty of miles that just disappeared under our wheels as our minds wandered, but there’s a lot of history in the road and there was something pretty amazing, as we cruised along with all of our belongings strapped to the back of the bike, to think about all the generations that had traveled the same route; all the different ways they had traveled, all the different destinations they had in mind, and all the different reasons for their journies.

Tagged as: california, History, Motorcycle, Nevada