History
The road was built in the 1930s during the Chaco War by Paraguayan prisoners.
The Yungas Road was modernized during a 20 year period ending in 2006. The modernization included enlarging the carriageway from one to two lanes, constructing asphalt pavement, and building a new section between Chusquipata and Yolosa, bypassing to the north one of the most dangerous sections of the old 'Death Road'.
This new route features modern construction (bridges, drainage, etc.), multiple lanes, pavement, guardrails, and many other elements that make it considerably safer than the original route. The original North Yungas Road is currently much less used by traffic, although an increasing number of adventure travelers bike it for the thrills.
On 24 July 1983, a bus veered off the Yungas Road and into a canyon, killing more than 100 passengers in what is said to be Bolivia's worst road accident.
Read more about this topic: Yungas Road
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)