Midland Trail
The Midland Trail, also called the Roosevelt Midland Trail, was a
Early routing
The early routing of the Midland Trail, from east to west, began in either New York City or Washington, D.C., and continued through
From
This part of the route was never popular, the state favoring the
At the junction in Big Pine, California in the Owens Valley, the original routing then split into four options:
- The first through Yosemite, and Stockton to San Francisco.
- The second through Bridgeport, California, Lake Tahoe, and Placerville to Sacramento and then San Francisco.
- The third south through Independence and Mojave in the Mojave Desert, and then west through Tehachapi Pass to the San Joaquin Valley, and then northward through Merced and Modesto to San Francisco.
- The fourth continuing southward from Mojave through Willow Springs to Los Angeles. By the time the Automobile Club of Southern California had prepared their 1917 map of the state, the fourth routing, through Mojave and Willow Springs to Los Angeles, had become the main routing for the Midland Trail in California.
Realignment
Following a major realignment of the route and assumption into the state highway system around 1922, the main Midland Trail alignment in California bypassed early stagecoach-era stops at Freeman and Willow Springs and at the Neuralia
Various alignments of this portion of the trail followed the late 19th century Twenty-mule team roads built to haul gold from the Cerro Gordo Mines across the Mojave Desert. and roads built for the early 20th century construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
Routing
Using the present road names, the highway approximately used the following route:
- U.S. Route 60, Newport News, Virginia, to Richmond, Virginia
- State Route 22 (Virginia), and U.S. Route 250, Richmond to Staunton, Virginia
- Two alternate routes – State Route 39 (Virginia), and U.S. Route 220, Staunton to Covington, Virginia
- U.S. Route 60, Covington to Louisville, Kentucky
- U.S. Route 150 and U.S. Route 50, Louisville to Kansas City, Missouri
- ]
- Denver, Colorado
- U.S. Route 40, Denver, former Colorado State Highway 11 (1923), (Salt Lake City
- Old Lincoln Highway, Salt Lake City to Ely, Nevada
- An alternate route, approved in 1922, followed U.S. Route 6 from Santaquin, Utah (south of Salt Lake City) to Ely.[1]
- U.S. Route 6,
References
- ^ Eureka Reporter, Grand Central Highway Now Alternate Route Archived 2012-07-18 at archive.today, June 30, 1922, p. 1
Sources
- Rand McNally Auto Road Atlas, 1926, accessed via the Broer Map Library: shows the entire route except in Missouri and Colorado
- Clason Map Company, Touring Atlas of the United States[permanent dead link], 1925
- Lincoln Highway Road Guide, 1917 (republished c1967)
- USGS Survey Maps, Mojave and Willow Springs quadrangles, 1913 and 1917 respectively
- Field checking conducted in 2005, 2006 and 2007
This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2007) |