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

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

By
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.   ...
2 comments
Read more

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

By
  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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

By
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...
4 comments
Read more