Revised 21 July 2002
*So I don't clutter the Ghostown pix page ... here is a brief tour of what used to be called US 80
*So we stay just a little on-topic ... link here, and here for more Route 66 pix instead
*And link here, here and here for more Route 60 pix
(The cool wallpaper photo at the ghost town index is US 80, circa 1947. There find some pictures, and a map of some of it in the teens, and I have some old hand-coloured postcards of this road from the 20's posted for you highway buffs too if you email me with your interests.)
First, as a connoisseur of roads, I must make appropriate commentary (it's my style). The concrete road depicted here is signed and dated (Bastich Bros., 21 Dec 1929). It is not some little secondary road - it is (was) US80 about 40 miles east of San Diego (near Buckman road). It was not bypassed by the early freeways in the early '60's (when it was only 30 years old) - it was in fact the last 5 or 8 miles of the old highway to still carry the heavy interstate traffic, spawned in part by the new I-8, as the last little bit of I-8 was being finished in the late '70's, closing the last gap in the great new behemoth. It is not in a climate devoid of severe temperature-swings and even snow - it is the mountains. Fifty years of transcontinental service, and, as this first picture was taken in the summer of '97, another 16.5 years of medium service and look at its condition!!!! No cracks, no potholes, no "resurfacing!" In fact, a few miles down the road the California Highway Dept. is doing (has done, in the past 5-8 years) more to destroy the road with its "preventative" resurfacing than 67 years of service even remotely approached. (I think they're just keepin' busy - and spending their allocation). Meanwhile, roads in my town of Tucson - and its not an isolated issue either - that were freshly built from scratch five years ago are already decrepit.
About 70% of this road (ranging 1930-1965 vintage) from Yuma to San Diego is still drivable through road, 5% more is drivable but no longer "through," and perhaps another 10% can just be seen or walked. Through Arizona these numbers are somewhat less (something like 40/3/5%) but interestingly, current jeep-trails and dirt-roads closely parallel the original graveled Ocean-to-Ocean Highway (sign is c1910 at what used to be Florence Junction, Arizona, where now only foundations remain) of the teens where the paved-versions' paths differed. In western Arizona, except where the military's Yuma Proving Grounds preclude access, perhaps 90% of the 1915 route can still be driven by the general public, and this certainly gives one an accurate picture of what desert motor-travel was like before pavement. Still, the California portion provides the most excellent sensation of prewar highway-motoring, for another few years - those that it will take the Highway Department to "improve" all the bridges, and "develop" all the shoulders, and remove as many corners as they can get the money to. Be sure to visit InKoPa Tower at the top of the grade (first road-grade completed there in April 1913) through Mountain Springs and into Boulder Park (town now deceased: I think it's now a Highway Department equipment yard, or similar), both of which used to be right on US80. When you exit for the tower, the road you double-back on is old 80 itself, and the view of the Anza-Borrego desert from the top is breathtaking.
This is the old station at Dateland, Arizona. Air conditioning in cars and trucks was rare before the early '70's, so long hot runs were usually made at night. Midway across the longest southwest desert run, in the '50's and '60's this became a bustling nighttime oasis during summer, replete with Post Office, restaurant, gift-shop and gardens.
Much of California's US80 in the prewar years was - kerplop, kerplap .. kerplop, kerplap .. kerplop, kerplap - concrete, and the bridges and guardrails of the highway were originally wooden. It seems the first roadbed was 12' wide and laid in about 1920. An average roadspeed of perhaps as much as 40MPH could safely be maintained on the paved parts. It was quickly improved, fully paved with somewhat banked corners, almost twice the width, and completed around 1932. The "new" Federal highway (these began in 1925) had attractive cast-concrete arched bridge-railings and cable-reinforced wooden guardrails. Attrition and "improvement" is rapidly taking its toll on what remains of these though. Bridges are being widened and their sides are barricaded, in solid modern concrete, at an alarming rate (considering the low traffic-count, and their historical/archival significance). If there is collision-damage, no effort is made to repair or restore the old decorative roadway-architecture, and it is ripped out and replaced with gleaming new ArmCo rails and solid walls: still no archival value is found by highway-departments in there details and they are disappearing. Here is a 1931 bridge that remains (or did in '97 when I was last there) just West of Jacumba, California (a relative Ghost town in its own right). Note the wooden guardrailing beyond to the right, and some '50's railing to the left, and the destructive Highway Department's ludicrous "repairs" in the foreground (there was a small crack there). At this spot some of the teens-20's road grade still exists too (to the left of and behind me).
Jacumba's great highway hotel has been razed. It was white stucco 4 stories high, also with arches, and finished in (real, not like we see today) Spanish tile. Across US80 from a popular hot-springs spa, now abandoned, it was destination in itself. Another hot-springs destination-resort from the early days still remains on the pre-paved route, as a ghost, in central Arizona (perhaps 15 miles north of current I-8). Many of the west's early motor courts remain in a variety of shambles too, and a few utterly intact and functional, but the biggies are almost all gone.
This was the great Kon-Tiki in Phoenix, Arizona in its last few days: it is now the site of a parking lot.
The predecessor of these highway giants, of course, where the motor-courts. At first these were just shacks rented for as much as 50 cents-a-night to be used as accessories in camping by the roadside. Known as motor-camps, they had benches on which you could put your "woodrobe" (sleeping bag), and a roof, and little else. Considered transient-quarters, most towns insisted that they be on the outskirts, and this tradition continues. Then later, oddly enough, covered parking was included, and eventually (by the mid '20's) amenities were added to the shacks themselves, and we had motor-courts. There is plenty of evidence that the rationale for the "parking" was to hide cars of people involved in dubious behaviours from ready public sight - then as now. The term "Motel" was first used as "mo-tel" by a motor-court owner, James Vail in San Luis Obispo, California in 1925. This is one of the first, if not the first motor-courts, and it should be noted that, even back then, as much space was allocated for the car as for the folks:
After Telegraph Pass (photo from postcard c 1965 from about ten years before its replacement, I-8, carved this part into useless pieces) and into California are the Great Sand Dunes over which it was difficult to build and maintain a gravel road. A roadbed of wooden planks in a steel frame was built to complete the original route of the teens. (History and photos of this unique road, and some from Route 66 too) This "plank" roadbed fell into disuse when pavement first began to cover the entire route (circa 1928 in this part).
