Southern California Regional Rocks and Roads

[Mark Sedenquist]

I received an email from Michael Ballard earlier today about updating the Ridge Route virtual tour on this page. I've known about Michael's various sites for a number of years, but I've not looked recently until today. These are incredible sources for road trip information in Southern California!

SoCalRegion.com Information about earthquakes, historical roadways and Road Conditions.

Historic Route 99 Did you know that there was an effort to identify and restore Route 99?

Ridge Route News! Incredibly, Michael and his team have been making solid progress with getting the Ridge Route reopened! Check out the latest information -- posted two weeks ago!

Very Exciting Stuff!

Mark

[Midwest Michael]

Historic US-99 seems like a tough thing to really get behind when a large portion of it just became CA-99. Frankly, I can think of quite a few decommissioned US highways that continue on as state highways with the same number.

[michaelfballard]

US 99 is a lot more than just current CA-99. In fact, a portion of current State 99 was never a part of the US highway. From Sacramento to Marysville, US 99E followed current I-80, State 65 (which itself has been realigned somewhat), State 70, State 20, and THEN State 99.

There is a lot of history still left alongside the roadway. It was the Main Street of California and remains so today. We seek not to redesignate the highway as US 99, but to keep its history alive and help to revitalize the towns along the way, much as the US 66 groups have done. In time, these efforts may spread to Oregon and Washington, but that is still unknown.