Skip to main content

Throwback Thursday; Catalina Highway

Back in 2012 I took a drive up the Catalina Highway through the Santa Catalina Range to Summerhaven near the 9,159 foot summit of Mount Lemmon.






The Catalina Highway is a 27 mile scenic route which starts at Tanque Verde Road in northeast Tucson and ends at Summerhaven within Coronado National Forest.  The Catalina Highway was constructed from 1933 to 1950 and is designated as Arizona Forest Route 39.  The original Catalina Highway was considered somewhat dangerous with narrow roadways and steep cliff-faces that were a hazard to traffic.  The Catalina Highway improved to the modern configuration from 1988 to 2007.

I started out fairly early in the morning ascending the Catalina Highway.  The lower elevations of the highway have typical plant life seen in the Sonoran Desert.





The Catalina Highway ascends rapidly but never had what I would consider a steep grade.  The Catalina Highway has wide shoulders which makes the road very popular with cyclists.  The increase in elevation yields a change of plant life resembling that of the nearby Chihuahuan Desert.












There are various pull-outs on the Catalina Highway offering wide vistas of the Sonoran Desert below.  As the terrain ascends the plant life becomes similar to what is typically seen on the Colorado Plateau with Ponderosa Pines making an appearance.






The grade of the Catalina Highway snakes through the Santa Catalina.  I don't recall how steep the road was but I would speculate it didn't exceed 10% at any point.






The vista near the top of the Catalina Highway offer wide views of the Sonoran Desert the roadway ascending the Santa Catalinas below.









Above the 7,000 foot line views shift towards the San Pedro River Watershed.







At about 8,000 the Catalina Highway begins to approach Summerhaven and Mount Lemmon.









Summerhaven apparently has about 40 full-time residents.  The community largely consists of people seeking temperatures 30F degrees cooler than the Sonoran Desert below in Tucson.  There are heavy burn scars from the 2003 Aspen Fire which apparently burned approximately 250 homes.








Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Pollasky Bridge

The Pollasky Bridge near modern day Friant is a ruined highway bridge which was completed during early 1906 as part of the Fresno-Fresno Flats Road.  The structure is one of the oldest known arch concrete spans to have been constructed in California.  The bridge briefly carried California State Route 41 following the destruction of the Lanes Bridge in 1940.  The Pollasky Bridge itself was destroyed by flooding during 1951, but the ruins can still be found on the Madera County side of the San Joaquin River.   Pictured as the blog cover is the Pollasky Bridge as it was featured in the 1913 book "The Concrete Bridge."  The structure can be seen crossing the San Joaquin River near Friant below on the 1922 United States Geological Survey Map.   Part 1; the history of the Pollasky Bridge The Pollasky Bridge site is near modern day Friant of Fresno County.  The community of Friant was established as Converse Ferry during 1852 on the San Joaquin Rive...

Trimmer Springs Road (Fresno County)

Trimmer Springs Road is an approximately forty-mile rural highway located in Fresno County.  The corridor begins near in California State Route 180 in Centerville and extends to Blackrock Road at the Kings River in the Sierra Nevada range near the Pacific Gas & Electric Company town of Balch Camp. The roadway is named after the former Trimmer Springs Resort and was originally constructed to facilitate access to the Sanger Log Flume.  Trimmer Springs Road was heavily modified and elongated after construction of Pine Flat Dam broke ground in 1947.   Part 1; the history of Trimmer Springs Road Much of the original alignment of Trimmer Springs Road was constructed to facilitate access to the Sanger Log Flume.   The  Kings River Lumber Company  had been established in 1888 in the form of a 30,000-acre purchase of forest lands in Converse Basin.  This purchase lied immediately west of Grant Grove and came to be known as "Millwood."  The co...

When was Ventura Avenue east of downtown Fresno renamed to Kings Canyon Road? (California State Route 180)

California State Route 180 was one of the original Sign State Routes designated in August 1934.  The highway east of Fresno originally utilized what was Ventura Avenue and Dunlap Road to reach what was then General Grant National Park.  By late year 1939 the highway was extended through the Kings River Canyon to Cedar Grove.   In 1940 General Grant National Park would be expanded and rebranded as Kings Canyon National Park.  The Kings Canyon Road designation first appeared in publications circa 1941 when the California State Route 180 bypass of Dunlap was completed.  Kings Canyon Road ultimately would replace the designation of Dunlap Road from Dunlap to Centerville and Ventura Avenue west to 1st Street in Fresno.   The Kings Canyon Road would remain largely intact until March 2023 when the Fresno Council designated Cesar Chavez Boulevard.  Cesar Chavez Boulevard was designated over a ten-mile corridor over what was Kings Canyon Road, remaini...