Skip to main content

California State Route 177

By
The first Californian signed highway I ever fully clinched was the quiet California State Route 177 out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert of Riverside County in 2011.  At the time I was working frequently in the Inland Empire Area and would use CA 177 as a shortcut to Mohave County, Arizona and Clark County, Nevada.  The last time I visited CA 177 in any capacity was in 2016.


The current CA 177 is the second highway to carry the designation and was authorized by the Legislature in 1972 according to CAhighways.org.  The current CA 177 is 27 mile north/south highway between I-10 north in Desert Center to CA 62.

CAhighways.org on CA 177

CA 177 was built over existing Rice Road out in the Sonoran Desert.   The full route of CA 177 appears a fully fledged State Highway first on the 1975 State Highway Map.

1975 State Highway Map

As a route the southern terminus of CA 177 is at I-10 in Desert Center.  Desert Center is a ghost town that was founded in the early 1920s as a transportation hub and grew from local mining activity at Eagle Mountain.  North of I-10 the route of CA 177 crosses former US Route 60/70 on Ragsdale Road.  More about US 60/70 on Ragsdale Road and the ghost town of Desert Center can be found on the blog below.

Old US Route 60/70 through Hell (Chuckwalla Valley Road and Ragsdale Road)

Below is a photo of a CA 177 shield I took from Ragsdale Road looking south at the terminus of I-10.


CA 177 has one major junction heading north out of Desert Center at Signed County Route R2//Kaiser Road.  CR R2 heads directly northward away from Desert Center towards the Eagle Mountain mine site.  CR R2 is 11.26 miles in length according to CAhighways.org.

CAhighways.org on CR R2

The remainder of CA 177 north out of Desert Center is a largely flat desert highway that is signed at 65 MPH all the way to CA 62.  Of note, Chuckwall Valley Raceway is located a couple miles north of Desert Center on CA 177.  Sections of CA 177 also skirt the eastern edge of Joshua Tree National Park.

CA 177 ironically is one of the first State Highway shields that I added to my sign collection.  I obtained this CA 177 shield from an eBay auction in 2013.


The first CA 177 was located between US 60 and modern CA 79 near Beaumont.  The first CA 177 was carved out of the segment of CA 79 on Gillman Springs Road which was re-designated as LRN 186 in 1959 according to CAhighways.org.  CA 79 was realigned in 1964 which coincidentally was the year the State Highway Renumbering occurred.  CA 79 being realigned and the first CA 177 can be seen by comparing the 1963 State Highway Map to the 1964 edition.

1963 State Highway Map 

1964 State Highway Map

According to CAhighways.org the first CA 177 was deleted in 1965 but it still appears on the 1966 State Highway Map.

1966 State Highway Map

The first CA 177 finally disappears by the 1967 State Highway Map edition.

1967 State Highway Map
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chowchilla Mountain Road to Yosemite National Park

By
Chowchilla Mountain Road of Mariposa County is one of the oldest roadways servicing Yosemite National Park.  As presently configured this fourteen-mile highway begins at California State Route 49 near Elliot Corner and terminates at the Wawona Road in Yosemite National Park.  Chowchilla Mountain Road was constructed as a franchise toll road over Battalion Pass circa 1869-1870.  The highway was built at behest of Galen Clark to connect the town of Mariposa to his property near the South Fork Merced River at what is now Wawona.   In late 1874 the highway along with Clark’s Station would be purchased by the Washburn Brothers.  The Washburn Brothers would continue to toll Chowchilla Mountain Road as part of their Yosemite Stage Route lines.  The highway would ultimately become a Mariposa County public highway in 1917.  Mariposa would later be more directly linked with Yosemite Valley in 1926 following the completion of the Yosemite All-Year Highwa...
2 comments
Read more

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

By
In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Angus L. Macdonald Bridge

By
At 1.3 kilometers (or about 0.84 miles) in length, the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge is one of two bridges crossing over the Halifax Harbour between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the other bridge being the A. Murray Mackay Bridge . Opened in 1955 and named after former Nova Scotia Premier and Canadian Minister of Defense for Naval Services Angus L. Macdonald, the Macdonald Bridge was the first bridge that crossed Halifax Harbour that was opened to traffic. The Macdonald Bridge was also the subject of the Big Lift, which was only the second time in history that the span of a suspension bridge were replaced while the bridge was open to traffic. Planning began in 2010 for the Big Lift, while construction took place between 2015 and 2017. Similar work occurred on the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver, British Columbia before the project took place on the Macdonald Bridge. At this time, much of the bridge infrastructure is new, leaving only the towers, main cables and...
1 comment
Read more