The route which we had taken, though strenuous enough, as my narrative indicates, is the one used by the majority of motorists going into the park. Of course, earlier in the season this road is not so rough and is freer from dust; one may make the trip to best advantage in July or early August. The time of opening the road varies, but the passes are usually clear of snow by the middle of June, though one is likely to find mud in places for some time after the snow has disappeared.
There are two other roads into the valley besides the Tioga road from the east. One of these leaves Fresno and joins the Madera road a few miles west of Wawona. One may start from either Modesto or Merced for the Coulterville road, which joins the valley road a little beyond El Portal. This road has the steeper grades, some as high as thirty per cent, but it takes one through some magnificent scenery and also passes the Merced Grove of big trees.
When the new route proposed and surveyed by the Automobile Club of Southern California is finally completed, the routes which I have described will probably be obsolete except for the occasional tourist who prefers the strenuous. The new route proceeds from Merced to Mariposa, a distance of forty miles, and is already partially completed. From Mariposa a new route has been surveyed by the club engineers to El Portal, following Bear Creek Canyon, a distance of thirty-three miles. Including the fifteen miles from El Portal, the total distance from the main highway is eighty-eight miles, or considerably less than any existing route. Better still, no grade on the new road will exceed five per cent and it will make Yosemite accessible by motor a much greater part of the year than at present. The completion of this proposed road is brought measureably nearer by the fifteen million dollar bond issue voted in 1916, as the Highway Commission has made the new Yosemite route a part of its pledged program.
A Run to the Roosevelt
Dam and to the
Petrified Forest
SOLITUDE—THE ARIZONA NATIONAL FORESTS
From painting by Thos. Moran
A Run to the Roosevelt Dam and the Petrified Forest
Possibly this chapter is out of place in a book of motor travel on the Pacific Coast, for it has somewhat to do with journeyings by railway train and shifts the scene of action to the barren hills and green valleys of Arizona—the land of mystery and contrast without peer among its sister states. In our goings back and forth to California over the Santa Fe Trail, we had often laid plans to stop at the Petrified Forests near Adamana and to visit Phoenix and the great Roosevelt Dam, which waters the green and fruitful Salt River Valley. It is hard, however, to wrench oneself from a Pullman car before the journey’s end when one has become comfortably located, and so our plans were usually deferred until some indefinite “next time.” Had we taken trouble to ascertain how easily and quickly such plans can be realized, we should no doubt have carried them out much sooner.