The success of the second state bond proposition submitted at the general election of 1916, providing fifteen million dollars to complete the highway system, insures that the work as outlined in Northern California will be carried forward as rapidly as possible. This comprises two trunk lines to the northern border: the Pacific Highway, traversing the Sacramento Valley, and the Coast Route, roughly following the ocean to Crescent City. A large part of the former road is already finished, but a much larger proportion of the Coast road is still undone. Besides these, several laterals will connect the county seats not served directly by the main lines, thus reaching the communities east of the Sierras, where no highway is planned. Much of the worst road covered in the tour described in this book will be eliminated when the proposed extensions are completed. This will probably require three years, or until 1920—and we may confidently predict that motor touring will become vastly more popular in this now little-known scenic wonderland.
The highways of Oregon present a still more serious question in that state than the one which California has to solve. With only one-fifth the population and with two-thirds the area of her neighbor, Oregon cannot undertake the vast road improvement plans that are being carried out south of her border. There is as yet little well-improved road in the state; a few pieces of macadam about Portland and down the Willamette Valley—much of it broken and rough—and the wonderful new Columbia River Highway comprising about all of it at this time. A number of the more prosperous counties, however, have voted bonds or are contemplating such a move, especially along the Pacific Highway, so that in the course of four or five years we may expect some appreciable results. But Oregon roads generally are desperately bad and are likely to remain so for some time. There will likely be much improvement in the way of grading and bridges, but surfacing after the splendid fashion of California is far off for the vast majority of Oregon highways. Multnomah County, in which is situated the city of Portland, has by far the greater mileage of surfaced highways and we found considerable road work in progress here. The first move toward a permanent system in this county was the issuance of two and a half millions in bonds, the proceeds of which were used to build the first fifty miles of the Columbia River Highway, and it is to be hoped that other counties will continue the good work until this wonderful road parallels the mighty river its entire length in the state.
We found the leaven of good-roads sentiment working strongly in Oregon during our sojourn in that state, and a little less than a year later it bore substantial fruit in a six-million bond issue which carried by a safe majority. This is avowedly only the entering wedge—it is safe to predict a repetition of California’s experience in adopting a second issue by a far larger popular vote than the first received. Six million dollars will not improve a very large percentage of Oregon’s immense road mileage, but it will serve to give the people of this state a demonstration of the advantages of permanent highways and the good work is sure to gain an impetus that will result in still more liberal provision for carrying it forward.
ON THE PACIFIC HIGHWAY
Courtesy of the Southern Pacific R. R. Co.
Efforts in both California and Oregon are at present being centered on the Pacific Highway and in the latter state perhaps half the mileage is improved in some way or other at this time. This is well enough, since this highway traverses the principal centers of population in both states and will no doubt serve the greatest number of people. It does not, however, compare in scenic interest with the coast road and it closely follows the Southern Pacific Railroad, affording one the alternative of seeing the country from the window of a Pullman car, which many will prefer while the highway is in its present state. The Coast road, however, traverses virgin wildernesses that can not be reached by railroad train and whose beauty will reward the somewhat strenuous effort which the motorist must make to penetrate them.
We realize now that our trip was made too rapidly to give us the best opportunity to see and enjoy the marvels of this wonderful region. For unavoidable reasons we could not start before the middle of September and before we made our round we became uneasy on account of the weather. We ran into showers on some of the worst mountain roads in California, the weather with its proverbial perverseness in the Golden State taking a “most unusual” turn. Snow fell in the Tahoe and Crater Lake regions shortly after we left them and with snow these roads are impassable for the average motor car. So one will be easier and practically sure of avoiding adverse weather manifestations if he will start the latter part of July—though the “unusual” may get him even then, since on the year of our tour the Crater Lake road was not free from snow until the first of August. One should plan short daily runs on such a tour and there are many side trips well worth while if there is plenty of time to do them. There are, moreover, many delightful inns and resorts to be found in the region we covered—some of them closed when we reached them—which might well tempt the wayfarer to tarry awhile to rest and enjoy at his leisure the surroundings of forest, lake or mountain stream, as the case may be. There will be many days on the road when such a respite will be very welcome, especially to the feminine members of the party. Excepting Portland, there is no large city in the territory covered by our tour; indeed, in California, north of San Francisco and Sacramento, there is no town larger than Eureka, with perhaps fifteen thousand people, while Eugene and Salem in Oregon and Reno in Nevada have approximately the same population. The situation of these towns and the territory tributary to them puts them nearer to the metropolitan class than the average eastern town of similar size.
Though the tour covered by this book was the most strenuous we have ever made and the lateness of the season compelled more haste than we liked, yet we look back upon the month spent among these rugged hill ranges and wide plains and valleys with unmixed satisfaction. We saw many things that justly may be rated among the wonders of the world. We saw enough to convince us that when this region is penetrated by well-constructed highways, it will divide honors with Southern California as a tourist resort and motorist’s paradise. It is little known at present; all the flood of books poured forth about California have dealt mainly with San Francisco and the country lying south of that city; and Oregon, aside from the Columbia River, has a very scant literature. I can not pretend in the limits of this work to have done the subject anything like full justice. It is a country of magnificent distances, of endless variety and immense and undeveloped resources, and volumes would be necessary should one enter into detail. But with the assistance of our sturdy car we saw much, indeed; we achieved in one month that which in old days would have required months of tedious travel.
We saw Tahoe, the gem of the world’s lakes, in its setting of snow-covered, pine-clad mountains. We saw the strange volcanic plains and hills of Lassen and Modoc Counties with their wide, shallow lakes. We saw Eagle Lake, flashing in the sunset like a sheet of molten silver among the pine forests that crowd up to its very shores. We saw the vast mountain cauldron with its lapis-lazuli sheet of water—the bluest bit of water on this mundane sphere—Crater Lake, with its mighty ramparts of unscaled cliffs and the unmatched vista of mountain forests and lake from the newly built government road. We saw the vast forests of Central Oregon, where in a whole day’s run there is little evidence of human habitation. We saw the great mountain range that skirts the plain covered by this forest, with here and there a stupendous peak, white with eternal snow, piercing the azure heavens. We saw the white, cold pyramid of Mount Hood with the dark belt of pines at its base, stand in awful majesty against a wide band of crimson sky. For a hundred miles we followed the vale of the queen river of the west, mountain-guarded Columbia, and coursed over the famous new highway with its unrivalled panoramas of stream and wooded hills. We pursued the western Willamette through its fertile, well-tilled valley and admired the prosperous, up-to-date towns along the way. We traversed the rough, sinuous trails over the summits of the rugged Cascades into the virgin redwoods of Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. For more than a hundred miles the narrow road twists through these giant trees, coming at times to commanding headlands from which there are endless vistas of shining sea. We visited Eureka, the wonder city of the North, long shut in behind ranges of almost impenetrable hills and dependent on the sea alone—though now it has a railroad and lives in hopes of the coming of the new state highway. We saw Shasta of the eternal snows and Lassen’s smoke-shrouded peak. We followed the rugged coastline of Mendocino County with its stern headlands overlooking leagues of glorious ocean. We coursed through the vast vineyards of the Napa and Santa Rosa Valleys with the terraced hill ranges on either hand showing everywhere the careful tillage one sees in Italy or along the Rhine. We crossed the pine-clad hills that shut in beautiful Clear Lake Valley with its giant oaks and crystal sheet of water—which still lingers in our memories as the loveliest spot in all California. We traversed the great plain of the Sacramento, whose pastoral beauty and quiet prosperity rivals that of the Mississippi Valley.