Book Notes

(from the California HISTORIAN)

(read an article on the Ridge Route by the author here on this site)

Ridge Route: The Road that United California
By Harrison Irving Scott
Published by the author, Torrance, CA, 2002, 324 pages, $25, ISBN 0-615-12000-8 www.ridgeroute.com

Reviewed by Lois H. McDonald
Former editor of the California HISTORIAN

When attending the 2002 Fall symposium of the Conference of California Historical Societies in Eureka, I was intrigued, while eating breakfast in the Eureka Inn, to hear a voice behind me, “The bus driver leaned out of the window and asked the bicyclists coming from the opposite direction, ‘Is this the way to Los Angeles?’”

I knew immediately that the person behind me still treasures, as do I, that memorable bus trip along a narrow treacherous strip of cement that was part of the symposium experience hosted by the Santa Clarita Valley Historical society in February 1995. I still recall the amazed, almost unbelieving, response on the faces of the cyclists as they came around a tight curve on the circa 1915 Ridge Route and met a modern bus!

The tour was led by Harrison I. Scott of Torrance, at that time expanding his personal fascination with the historic highway to work with staff of the Angeles National Forest to have the part of the old road transversing the national forest placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The designation was accomplished in 1997.
While insisting that he was no author, Scotty agreed to turn the stuff that had arrested the imagination of his tour group that February day into an article for the California Historian. It appeared in the Summer 1997 issue. With each repeating of the story, an audience grew on both sides of the connecting link, from Los Angeles on the south to Bakersfield on the north.

Now Scott has expanded his research into a full length book — one with over 200 photographs. These include the process of road construction as well as sites and people that lived along the route and made often tenuous livings serving the early model automobiles and trucks. Traveling the dangerous and never-ending twists and grades created along the top of the mountains from Castaic to the bottom of the Grapevine, with an oft-posted speed limit of 15 mph, required stopping for meals and lodging as well as gas.

Scott’s book-length account prefaces the details of the selection of best terrain for the road and its subsequent construction problems, with historical data of earlier crossings of the mountains, by stage and train lines, and gas and electric companies.

The many attempted improvements to the Ridge Route after its completion in 1915 to its abandonment as part of the California highway system in 1933 are related in Scott’s book. A portion of the road is still maintained as part of the national park. Other portions are still used as access roads. Some of the road has fallen into disuse.
The old road and the era in transportation development it represents comes most alive in the stories of the people who built the road, traveled the road and those who lived along the way. Scott has traced the ownership of most of the roadside businesses and obtained from surviving family members the photographs of places and people that fill this book with glimpses of a rich portion of California’s past.

When I received a copy of this book from Scotty I was enthralled by it with one small exception. I did write to him and complain that he had failed to include a map! He had obviously given his mileage estimates, word pictures and photographs the responsibility for carrying to the readers a complete understanding. Map-oriented “tourists” such as I convinced him to cater to our segment of the reading population. The book now has a map inserted and secured to the end pages of the text.

Thanks, Scotty!