Author: Michael Ballard

1934 Ridge Route Relinquishment

On October 29, 1933, four years after the 1929 stock market crash, the Ridge Route Alternate was opened. This new roadway was intended originally to be an alternate to the Ridge Route, a roadway for those wanting to go faster. Instead, all traffic diverted onto the new roadway. Due to this and the roadway itself being bypassed, the state no longer wanted to maintain the Ridge Route. On August 3, 1934, the California Highway Commission formally relinquished the whole of the Ridge Route, from State 138 to Castaic, to the County of Los Angeles. The document was finally recorded on October 2, 1934 as OR 12996-210.

This relinquishment would be in doubt, however, many years later when there was dispute between the County and the Forest Service as to who would pay for maintenance of the roadway. The County did little to maintain the road, the Forest Service did about as much. The discovery of this document at the Caltrans District 7 office temporarily settled the dispute, or so it would have seemed. The County, in their effort to offload the roadway to the Forest Service, chose the quickest, albeit the most negligent and improper, method to do so. Instead of doing what the State did in 1934, they vacated the roadway in 2005, akin to abandoning it.

This is what we fight. Any and all help is gladly appreciated.

1934 Ridge Route Relinquishment

What makes the Ridge Route so unique?

Really, what is so special about this road? What makes it worthy of such preservation efforts? The Ridge Route is more than just a scenic path through the northern Angeles National Forest. It is more than a roadway that helped bring together, and keep together, the state of California. The roadway is a time capsule, from really no later than 1930, showing how roads were first built in the modern age. This roadway was the first of its kind, still using manual labor and some steam shovels, to build a brand new roadway across open terrain. No other roadway in California, and possibly even the US, has such a long section of paving intact from such an early period. No other roadway retains the methods of construction as the Ridge Route does. Other roads were upgraded, with curves or short sections bypassed. Other roads may have even been obliterated with the advent of freeways.

The Ridge Route represents so much to so many. It is that which makes it more than worthy for the efforts to preserve it. We have the ability to save it. We need your support to do it. Without that support, this roadway could well be lost to time and development, depriving those in the future of an opportunity to see where things came from.

Right of Way issues along the road

All roadways, regardless of their designation, have some sort of right-of-way. Before things got to be a bit more standard and better documented, these could change at the whim of, well, most anyone. Modern roads have designated paths, carved through other properties. Depending on circumstances, these paths can be either an easement, owned lands, or some other method.

Roads such as the Ridge Route were granted an easement through existing public, in this case federal, lands. Such easements were quite common during the period. Even today, not all the land along a roadway is owned by the agency that maintains the road. An example of this is State 39 – San Gabriel Canyon Road – in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Azusa. Caltrans maintains the right-of-way through the forest, but does not own the right-of-way. The highway was granted an easement through the forest, with the provision that, should the roadway be abandoned, the road would be returned to its “natural state”. This particular issue has been a problem for Caltrans as they have wanted to abandon a section of 39 that has been closed since 1978. To return it to a natural state would well exceed any costs to rehabilitate the roadway and open it.

The Ridge Route, however, is a different animal. While, at present, the County of Los Angeles has vacated the roadway (a nice way to say abandoned), the Angeles National Forest does wish to keep the roadway available for their use. Where our issue lies is with the easement itself. As the easement was granted before the landowner on the south end obtained their land, their land has this easement. As the roadway was illegally vacated and the easements not properly maintained, they are using that as an opportunity to claim the road as their own.

Illegal signage declaring a portion of the Ridge Route as a “private” roadway.

Previously, we posted that the Angeles National Forest is actively maintaining the roadway, at least by 2009, by performing an AC (Asphaltic Concrete) overlay on the southern end of the Ridge Route. This overlay shows unquestionably that the Forest Service is maintaining the roadway. No monies for this maintenance came from the landowner.

We need your help to fight this. We are demanding the County of Los Angeles rescind their road vacation and quitclaim the road to the Forest Service. This would properly transfer any and all easements for the road and allow the PUBLIC to enjoy this historic treasure.

Ridge Route Online Petition

Hello all,

The Ridge Route in Southern California needs your help. The Ridge Route Preservation Organization has put together an online petition to help get the roadway back open and in working order. It has not been fully open to traffic since 2005 and is in need of your support. Please sign this petition to get the legislators and the Angeles National Forest to fix what they did wrong. More details are on the site for the petition. The petition was posted a while ago, but has not yet been posted on this site.

Thank you for your time and efforts!

http://www.change.org/p/help-save-the-old-ridge-route-road?recruiter=558871232