All posts by Michael F Ballard

Michael F Ballard is the author and administrator of the Southern California Regional Rocks and Roads website, https://socalregion.com, since 1995. I have been studying the geology and highway history throughout southern California for most of my life. I am also the President of the Ridge Route Preservation Organization. Founder of the Historic Highway 99 Association of California, https://historic99.org .

Fire near Lake Hughes – Updated 8/24/2020

Updated 8/24/2020. Map from USFS Inciweb.

It seems that our fire season is going strong this year, which is unfortunate considering everything else going on. This cause of this fire, known as the Lake Fire, is still unknown. It is burning some areas that haven’t seen a fire in over 100 years. The fire is was burning to the northeast, away from the Old Ridge Route. It has turned west along Sawmill Mountain and Liebre Mountain toward the Ridge Route and Sandberg. As of 8/24/2020, it looks like the fire’s progress toward the Ridge Route and Knapp Ranch has stopped. For updated information, here are a couple of good websites:

Angeles National Forest – Inciweb
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6953/

Los Angeles County Fire Department Twitter Feed
https://twitter.com/LACoFDPIO

I plan to travel up to that area soon after the fire is no longer a threat for another Ridge Route inspection. Hopefully there aren’t any more fires.

Featured Image – 7/27/2020

Old Sunrise Highway in the fall, west of Wooded Hill.

Sunrise Highway is a very scenic roadway east of San Diego. Shown here is an old alignment of the roadway, bypassed in the late 1950’s. The old alignment was more prone to snow and ice than the current one, hence the relocation from the north slope to the south slope. This photo was taken in November 2009.

Old US 101 in San Diego

A reader, Mike Evans, recently contacted me regarding curb stamps along old US 101 near Middletown in San Diego. He found something which, to be honest, is most surprising. The City of San Diego had the practice of stamping the street name on the curb near intersections. As these intersections get upgraded with ADA compliant ramps, some of these stamps get lost. This one, however, was still there by virtue of a quirk of fate. Along Pacific Highway, between Palm St and Sassafras St, there is a stamp for “Atlantic St”. This stamp is mid-block, which seems odd at first as this isn’t where they are normally stamped. In this case, the stamp was retained but the intersection wasn’t. At some point, a short section of Quince St intersected Pacific Highway. As this only ran a short distance and was cut off by the railroad tracks, it was fairly easy to abandon and vacate. So, after the city did that, the intersection was erased, but the curb with the name remained.

I was surprised the stamp even existed, as I was under the impression that it would have been obliterated when Pacific Highway was widened in the 1940’s. I do wish to thank Mike Evans for finding this as it is a unique part of San Diego history that wasn’t easy to find. All photos are courtesy of Mike Evans. Additional photos show US 101 between Downtown and just north of Old Town.

Transit Tracker

While not specifically a real-time tracker, this neat website has a clickable map where you can locate transit vehicles, get next stop information (though not time), and a map of the route. It seems more likely a visualization of where things should be if the schedules are followed instead of something to assist passengers. From what I’ve found, it covers the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions in California. Other cities, such as Phoenix, Arizona, are also covered. The site is Swiss, hence the .ch TLD.

https://tracker.geops.ch/

Los Angeles History Link

When looking for images of the Pacific Electric Railway or something showing US 99 near downtown Los Angeles, I found this really cool website with a lot of old photos of the Los Angeles area. I recommend a visit! It is called Water and Power Associates.

https://waterandpower.org/index.html