I gotta do that hike one day.
For the record - I'm betting it was a State project, not something dreamt up willy-nilly by SGV residents.
Second, this effort is now seen as kind of a joke, a folly. It was eventually ditched, that is true. The 1938 floods made sure of that. (Mostly it was a cost-benefit decision, or course. Who knows if it was being constructed today, and similar floods struck, whether the same cost-benefit calculus would apply. They may have cleanup up the mess and pressed on. Maybe. Maybe not.)
I just took Hiway 1, through Big Sur, about a month ago. That was an ambitious project as well, constructed about the same time, and had plenty of detractors. There was nothing guaranteeing ITS successful completion either.
Today, of course, The Big Sur Highway is in the pantheon of California's most treasured attractions. No one can conceive of it NOT being there. But it's not inconceivable to think it might never have been finished either. (Just one plausible scenario: WWII breaks out before it is finished. Obviously construction is halted, and after the war the highway takes a back seat in priority, and never does get finished.)
Some luck, some timing, a flood......all the difference between a road known around the world and a footnote to a trivia question.
Just something to think about, I guess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FredH
Back in the 1930's, the residents of the San Gabriel Valley decided that cutting a road through the San Gabriel Mountains
to the resort city of Wrightwood on the other side, was a good idea. The plan was to generally follow the East Fork of the
San Gabriel River. After a few years of blasting, road building, and bridge building, the Great Flood of 1938 came along and
washed it all away (except for one bridge).
www.scvresources.com
The bridge is not connected to anything and it takes a nine mile round trip hike to get up there. Its main use now seems to be for bungee jumping.
Google Maps
The Bridge to Nowhere comes by its name fairly, because it really is in the middle of nowhere. You can find it somewhere inside this red circle:
Google Maps
If anyone wants to attempt the hike, the instructions (with a nice video) are here:
http://www.losangeleshikingguide.hik...tional-forest/ |