Gribblenation

Madera County Road 420 is 4.2 mile mostly dirt surfaced cutoff between Road 223 (Teaford Saddle Road) at Teaford Saddle and California State Route 41 in Deadwood Gulch. The corridor flanks the northern ridge of the 4,433-foot-high Thornberry Mountain and was once known as Thornberry Road. Thornberry Road first appears on the 1914 Madera County Surveyor's Map serving as a cutoff connecting Coarsegold more directly with Crane Valley (Bass Lake). The Road 420 name was assigned to the corridor in the middle of the Twentieth Century when Madera County to a numbering system. Much of the corridor remains unsurfaced into modern times due to the bulk of it being located in the boundary of Sierra National Forest. Part 1; the history of Thornberry Road The communities of Coarsegold and Oakhurst are two of the oldest in what is now eastern Madera County.  Coarsegold was plotted along Coarsegold Creek in 1852 whereas Fresno Flats (renamed as Oakhurst by 1912) was plotted at the Fresno River...