U.S. Route 199 - History

History

By 1854, when it was incorporated, Crescent City had a population of 800 but no road leading inland. The Crescent City and Yreka Plank and Turnpike Company was incorporated at a meeting on June 10, and a survey was completed in October, but work stopped with the Panic of 1855. The corporation was revived in December 1856 as the Crescent City Plank Road and Turnpike Company, began construction of a plank road in 1857, and opened the road in May 1858. This road, shown on USGS topographic maps as Wimer Road, led northeast from Crescent City to the Smith River, where there was a toll booth, and then took a generally northerly route to near the state line, where it turned east, crossing back and forth between the states, to Oregon Mountain. There it turned northeast, following the Illinois River and branches past O'Brien and Waldo to north of Kerby. The final stretch ran easterly to Jacksonville via Wilderville, along the present US 199, Fish Hatchery Road, and OR 238.

A second road in California was built by Horace Gasquet, who acquired a stand of trees at the present site of Gasquet, California — where the North and Middle Forks of the Smith River converge — in 1857. In 1881, he began to build a corduroy road from what had become Gasquet Flats to the plank road at the state line near Oregon Mountain, shown as Old Gasquet Toll Road on USGS maps. Tolls were charged starting in 1882, and in 1887 the road was completed. Gasquet also built a free road from Gasquet Flats along the Smith River to the mouth of the South Fork, including a suspension bridge across that waterway, and Del Norte County extended it along the Smith River and Mill Creek and over Howland Summit to the Crescent City Plank Road just east of Crescent City.

As part of Oregon's initial state highway system, the road from Grants Pass southwest to Wilderville and then along the Crescent City Plank Road to the state line was named the Grants Pass-Crescent City Highway No. 25 in November 1917. At the time, the Grants Pass-Crescent City route, via the Gasquet Toll Road, was a narrow, winding unpaved mountain road with long grades and some remaining plank road in California. California added its portion to the state highway system in 1919, for the state's third highway bond issue, as an extension of Legislative Route 1. By 1924, the road was part of the Redwood Highway, which continued south to Sausalito, but was still completely unimproved between Crescent City and Waldo, Oregon. (Oregon changed the Grants Pass-Crescent City Highway name to Redwood Highway in May 1924.) A new highway between Gasquet and Kerby was completed by the two states in September 1926, and in June 1929 the new Hiouchi Bridge over the Smith River was dedicated, bypassing the remainder of the old road over Howland Hill. In 1948, US 199 became part of the Winnemucca to the Sea Highway, organized to promote the route that has largely become Nevada State Route 140 and Oregon Route 140 from I-80 at Winnemucca, Nevada to Crescent City. One major improvement to the highway's alignment was made after 1929: the Collier Tunnel replaced the winding route over Hazel View Summit in California on July 20, 1963.

Neither of the early designations — Highway 25 and Route 1 - was marked (signs posted by the California State Automobile Association used the Redwood Highway name), but in 1926 it became U.S. Route 199, a branch of US 99 from Grants Pass to US 101 in Crescent City. Oregon moved the Pacific Highway No. 1 from present OR 99 to I-5, which bypassed Grants Pass, in 1959, and the Redwood Highway No. 25 was extended north through downtown Grants Pass to I-5. A proposed branch on M Street to I-5 east of downtown was also included in Highway 25, but this was moved to the E and F Streets one-way pair in 1961. (I-5 here was built in the early 1960s, but US 99 remained on the old alignment.) On the California side of the state line, US 199 was added to the California Freeway and Expressway System in 1959 and the State Scenic Highway System in 1963; in the 1964 renumbering the Route 1 designation was dropped, making Route 199 the legislative number. Although US 299 and US 399 became state routes in 1964, the shorter US 199, which crossed a state line, remained. US 99 has since become Oregon Route 99 through Grants Pass, and US 199 now ends at I-5. The spur east from downtown Grants Pass to I-5 was built at the same time as I-5, and in 1991 it was moved from E and F Streets to bypass downtown on the new Grants Pass Parkway.