Skip to main content

Echo Valley Road (Monterey County)

By


Echo Valley Road is an approximately three mile connecting highway through the Gablian Range in the Prunedale area.  The corridor begins at Monterey County Route G12 at San Miguel Canyon Road and extends east to an interchange located at US Route 101.  Echo Valley Road originated near the founding of Prunedale during the 1890s but did not become a modernized roadway until the middle of the twentieth century.  




Part 1; the history of Echo Valley Road

Echo Valley is located in the community of Prunedale.  Said community was founded near the junction of San Migeul Canyon, Langley Canyon and Echo Valley.  Watsonville settler Charles Langley (namesake of Langley Canyon) was one of the prominent early community settlers.  The Prunedale Post Office would open for the first time in 1894 but would close by 1908.  Early agriculture in the area consisted of Plum Trees which failed due to a lack of irrigation.  

What is now modern Echo Valley Road can be seen on the 1917 California State Automobile Association map.  Said map shows the roadway extending east from the site of Prunedale along modern San Miguel Canyon Road east to Legislative Route Number 2 at the San Juan Grade (future US Route 101).  The corridor is shown be a minor roadway and also comprises what is Crazy Horse Canyon Road.  


During 1932 US Route 101 was realigned off the San Juan Grade through the so-called "Prunedale Cutoff" through Langley Canyon.  The then new alignment of US Route 101 spurred development of Prunedale and the community reobtained Post Office service in 1953.  A modernized roadway through Echo Valley first appears on the 1956 United States Geological Survey map of the Prunedale area (courtesy historicaerials.com).




Part 2; a drive on Echo Valley Road

Eastbound Echo Valley Road begins from San Miguel Canyon Road (Monterey County Route G12) in Prunedale. 


Eastbound Echo Valley Road ascends into the Gabilan Range and crests an unnamed pass at 523 feet above sea level.  The summit of the unnamed pass faces towards Fremont Peak.  














Echo Valley Road ends at an interchange with US Route 101.  The roadway continues east as Crazy Horse Canyon Road east to the San Juan Grade.  




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ghost Town Tuesday; The Packard Plant and Michigan Central Station

By
A couple years back I was in Metro Detroit, against my better judgement I decided on a ruins hunt in the City. Why am I featuring a city of 673,000 approximate residents on a Ghost Town Tuesday?   The reason is two fold; back in 1950 the City of Detroit had an approximate population of 1,850,000 residents at the height of the Domestic Automotive Industry.  A common definition of a "ghost town" is either an abandoned place or a place that has lost the vast majority of it's population.  With a almost 63.6% population decline the City of Detroit would certainly meet the criteria of a place that has lost most of it's population.  The second reason is simply that Detroit is the City I was born in and the truth is that I don't have many photos from when it wasn't a civic corpse. For whatever reason the day I picked to go to downtown Detroit had to be one of the most gloomy late summer days I've ever seen in Michigan.  The rain was coming down pretty hard ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cajon Pass; Cajon Pass Toll Road, National Old Trails Road, US Route 66/91/395 and Interstate 15

By
This past weekend I spent some time in Cajon Pass traversing the many historic road alignments. Cajon Pass is located in San Bernardino County, California along the San Andreas Fault.  Cajon Pass  serves the boundary line between the Mojave Desert, the San Gabriel Mountains, San Bernardino Mountains and San Bernardino Valley.  Cajon Pass is historically one of the most traveled transportation corridors in American California and presently is served by four rail lines, Interstate 15 and California State Route 138. While Cajon Pass is known mostly for carrying US Route 66 it has carried numerous other signed highways that have had a significant impact on regional and national road travel.  While this is my best attempt to compile everything from the best sources I could find into one single transportation history blog regarding road travel in Cajon Pass I suspect as time goes on this article will be frequently updated.  If you have any information that you ...
1 comment
Read more

The Tale of Tollhouse Road, western California State Route 168 and failed Piute Pass Highway

By
Western California State Route 168 is entirely located in Fresno County and is linked historically to the Tollhouse Road corridor.   Tollhouse Road is one of the oldest highways in the Sierra Nevada range of Fresno County. The corridor presently begins in at Clovis Avenue in downtown Clovis and extends northeast to Huntington Lake. In 1866 the Woods Brothers established mining claims on Pine Ridge. In 1867 Fresno County would grant the brothers a toll franchise to construct a roadway to the desirable logging areas atop Pine Ridge and near Dinkey Creek. The Woods would establish a tollhouse at the start of their franchise road and lumber mill. The lumber mill attracted settlers which led to the establishment of the mountain town of Tollhouse. Fresno County would purchase the Tollhouse Road in 1878 and make it a public highway. The county would remove the tolls and incorporate the corridor into the existing county road network. Prior to the establishment of Clovis in 1...
Post a Comment
Read more