The route west from Tucson or Phoenix to San Diego, once designated as the Ocean to Ocean Highway, and then in '25 as US80 which is now superceded by I-8, has been a transcontinental route since at least 1774. In the early automobile-years in western Arizona, near Mohawk, in 1912 the Arizona Good Roads Association (a mapping and promotional organization) described it as, "...good road ...gravel bottoms." Further west the teens-route turned far north and around the Gila ("Hee-la") Mountains and then south to Yuma-crossing. The first road-grade through the mountains at Telegraph Pass saved many hours' driving.
Shown here circa 1937 it was freshly paved - a relative novelty in Arizona even that late. Large parts of the already-then famous US66 through the north of the state were still gravel-surfaced in '37. I need to quote here to help you imagine the reality of long trips in the west before paving, from Susan Croce Kelly's wonderful Route 66 book, from a fellow (George Greider) who headed toward Kansas with his wife, on a motorcycle in the early '20s: "We went north out of Los Angeles on a concrete slab that was fairly new. It wasn't wide enough for traffic, but two cars could pass without going off. That slab lasted all the way to the top of Cajon Pass, and we really moved on that little slab of paving. When we came to the end of it at the top of the rise, the terrain flattened out and the paving just stopped. There were no signs - nothing - and we just drove off into the sand. The sand was real deep, and the motorcycle came to a stop four feet from the end of the slab. We stood there for awhile. There were two ruts in the sand from there on. There were a few signs through the desert and prairie, and two ruts in the sand for miles and miles, hundreds of miles, and not a sign of civilization at all."
This is one of my all-time favourite shots. Don't know why. It is a curve on Route 66 just outside Hackberry Arizona in 1937 just before pavement arrived there, and this gravel road through this "cut" sure seems civilized compared with the ruts of a decade before. 25 miles east along US66 is Peach Springs where these two cars had likely stopped an hour before for fuel and water.
John had just traveled about 115 miles that morning, a 19MPH average. But I digress - back down south to the US66 contemporary, US80:
The Colorado river at Yuma used to have water in it back then, and was a popular ferry-crossing for early cars. As transcontinental traffic increased in the '20s, largely owing to the new palnk-road through the sand, a bridge was put in.
This image of Yuma crossing is from about 1945. Beyond is California, of which the first 50 miles or so is pure sand dunes. As you may know, when the wind blows sand dunes move, change shape, and tracks disappear. Old-timers had to be navigators to travel anyhow, and would just take a compass-heading and trudge through the sand in that direction until they got through it. The new motor-tourists, however, neither had the navigational skills nor the proper equipment to negotiate sand dunes in a car. Besides, there was competition between routes in those days: the businesses along each transcontinental highway banded together into route-associations which would pool money to finance advertising which encouraged green-motorists to use their route. This more important than today as many tourists were one-time travelers seeking their California-fortunes so businesses didn't get a second-shot, and as motor-travel was very slow (perhaps as much as a 35 MPH average, not including frequent stops, by 1932) so travelers needed to purchase more food, lodging, repairs, etc., along a given stretch of road, making for many individual roadside businesses an environment more lucrative than today. Also, the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway already had a major competitor: The Old Trails Highway to the north that would become Route 66. It was in the best interest of the association to make the dunes easily passable to market the route as "complete." In 1914 a unique road-bed solution was built.
Pictured here in roughly 1928, still quite serviceable, is the steel-framed roadway surfaced with wooden planks. Since a state-of-the-art gravel (as opposed to dirt) highway would be lost in the dunes each few weeks, and building and maintaining a paved road out in the desolate desert was not even dreamt-of, the idea arose that if the road were flexible and could shift with the dunes it might well stay "afloat." It was a high maintenance highway, but it basically worked!
Even in 1941 when this photo was taken, over 17 years after it fell into disuse and maintenance ceased, much of it is still afloat and fairly intact. In the early 20s, the realization alone that fully-paved coast-to-coast highways could be a reality, spelled the demise of the Plank Road though, after relatively few years of use. Highway Americana was suddenly evolving at an incomprehensible rate then, as hundreds of first-time car-owners/highway-users rapidly became millions - The Depression completing the cycle by forcing mobility.
This hand-coloured post card is from about 1932: oh so modern a road - we've arrived! Unlike the gravel highways of the teens and '20s, continuous asphalt, even lost beneath sand, if there is a maintenance-budget is fairly easy to find again, and clean off. Opened in about 1924 was this fabulous new desert-slab, and 'boy were they proud.
Seen here in the circa 1955, the paved US80 closely parallels the Plank Road, most of which could then be seen along side. About a half-mile of this part of this roadbed is still visible (7/00) in short un-buried pieces, north of I-8, and toward the west end of the dunes.
By the mid '50s much of the road is buried and the steel-structure is failing. In this photo it is clear that people have certainly helped speed the failure by forcing-out the planks.
But, as seen here in the early '60s, the shifting sands have done their share of damage by fatiguing
and breaking the steel. Interstate 8 replaced US80 through here about ten years later. Shortly
thereafter the dunes became a popular winter vacation spot for folks with ATVs, and most the
rest of the remains quickly vanished. I believe that some of it was carted-off intact for a museum
(something tells me it's the Henry Ford) somewhere. While as recently as summer '97 a few
scraps of the 85 year-old contraption were still visible out in the sun in the dunes, by July '00 I
could find no traces.
Highway sex in the '30's (sorry, I just couldn't resist)
Up-date = 7/9/00
