Skip to main content

Bitterwater Road and Bitterwater Valley Road to Blackwell's Corner

By
This month I drove Bitterwater Road and Bitterwater Valley Road over the Temblor Range to Blackwell's Corner.



Bitterwater Road and Bitterwater Valley Road to Blackwell's Corner

My route from CA 58 was northeast on Bitterwater Road and Bitterwater Valley Road over the Temblor Range to California State Route 46 (former US Route 466).  From CA 46 in Bitterwater Valley I took a short eastern jog to Blackwell's Corner at intersection of CA 46/CA 33.  My path from CA 58 to Blackwell's Corner in total was 29.6 miles in length.


Note; the full length of Bitterwater Road from CA 46/CA 41 near Cholame south to CA 58 within Carrizo Plain was featured previously on Gribblenation.  The previous feature contains the notable greenery of the very wet winter of 2017 and can be found here:

Bitterwater Road

Bitterwater Road is a rural highway which begins at CA 58 in Carrizo Plain of San Luis Obispo County.  Bitterwater Road climbs into the Temblor Range where it briefly enters Kern County and enters the watershed of Bitterwater Creek.  Bitterwater Road continues northwest following the San Luis Obispo County and Kern County Line to CA 46/CA 41 near Cholame.  Bitterwater Road is a very old rural highway which can be observed on the 1917 California State Automobile Association Map of California.  Notably Bitterwater Road during 1917 appears as a continuation of Soda Lake Road. 


Bitterwater Valley Road is an approximately 15 mile roadway which originates at Bitterwater Road atop the San Andreas Fault of San Luis Obispo County.  Bitterwater Valley Road follows the course of Bitterwater Creek through the Temblor Range into Kern County where it emerges into Bitterwater Valley and reaches CA 46.  The first map I could find to clear display Bitterwater Valley Road was the 1935 California Division of Highways Map of Kern.


I began my journey towards Blackwell's Corner by way of making a northbound turn onto Bitterwater Road from CA 58 westbound.  CA 46 and Cholame are signed being 32 miles to the north on Bitterwater Road.



Bitterwater Road initially begins in the northern reaches of Carrizo Plain.  Bitterwater Road northward is initally flat and passes through a series of ranches before reaching the Temblor Range.  Oddly along Bitterwater the route ahead to CA 46 is signed as 36 miles away as opposed to the 32 seen from CA 58. 











Bitterwater Road swings northeast within the Temblor Range.  Just northeast of Las Yeguas Ranch the route of Bitterwater Road intersects the abandoned segment of Soda Lake Road (the last photo below).









Bitterwater Road takes a northwest turn and enters the San Andreas Fault along the course of Bitterwater Creek.












Bitterwater Road intersects Bitterwater Valley Road within the San Andreas Fault via a right-hand turn eastbound.  Interestingly CA 46 is shown to be 17 miles away which more likely is a reference to the distance to Blackwell's Corner.













Bitterwater Valley Road initially jogs east through the Temblor Range following the course of Bitterwater Creek.













Bitterwater Valley Road emerges into Bitterwater Valley where it takes a northeastern turn to CA 46.












Upon reaching CA 46 I turned eastward towards CA 33 and Blackwell's Corner.  Blackwell's Corner was the last place James Dean was seen alive before his infamous cross to the west in Cholame.  There is a couple James Dean billboards (one containing a brief historic summary) located at Blackwell's Corner.  The photos below were taken during March of 2020 during the end of the wet season.  





Blackwell's Corner is heavily intertwined into the backstory of US Route 466.  More on US 466 as it relates to current CA 46 can be found below:

Legacy of US Route 466 Part 1; California State Route 46

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more