Old Creek Road

After completing Signed County Route G14 I headed on California State Route 46 west of Paso Robles to Old Creek Road.

Old Creek Road is a short connecting route between CA 46 and CA 1. Old Creek Road is a somewhat infamous road in San Luis Obispo County that draws a lot of interest from motorcycle groups. Interestingly Old Creek Road not only has a junction with CA 46 but also Santa Rosa Creek Road which was a former alignment of CA 41 before the 1964 Highway Renumbering in addition to post 1964 CA 46.

Old Creek Road starts with a simple advisory sign that the next 5 miles are curvy which is an understatement.

From CA 46 Old Creek Road descends on a tall downhill grade from about 1,300 feet above sea level to 220 feet at the Whale Rock Reservoir. Old Creek Road is extremely narrow through this section and the road bed has deep groves to deter lane crossing.

The Whale Rock Reservoir was completed in 1961 and impound Old Creek. Its kind of strange to see a man-made lake floating above the Pacific Ocean which clearly can be seen not far to the west.

At the Whale Rock Reservoir the grade of Old Creek Road becomes far more shallow and it enters Cayucos where it terminates at CA 1.

Interestingly Old Creek Road has been around for quite a long time and probably was an even more useful road before CA 46 was realigned onto it's modern routing off Santa Rosa Creek Road. The alignment of Old Creek Road can clearly be seen on the 1935 California Division of Highways map of San Luis Obispo County. Interestingly it appears Old Creek Road used to run through what is now Whale Rock Reservoir onto 13th Street in Cayucos. I find it odd that Old Creek Road never received a Signed County Route designation given that it would have made for a decent addition to the system and is old enough to be exempt from modern width requirements.

1935 San Luis Obispo County Highway Map

Comments

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926. Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California. The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant. However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes. The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield. In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range. ...

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida. One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region. For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate. Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century. Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area. The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...