Skip to main content

Signed County Route G16 (US 101 west to G20)

By
Back in January there was some clearings in the winter storms that had been hammering the state for what seemed like was a solid month.  I was on my way to Monterey for the weekend and decided to take a much different route than the conventional fare with Signed County Route G16.  I peeled off of US 101 north into Greenfield and met G16 at Elm Avenue. 


G16 is 56 mile east/west County Route entirely in Monterey County that was defined back in 1965.  G16s eastern terminus is about 3 miles east of Greenfield at County Route G15.  G16 travels west through the Santa Lucia Range meeting California State Route 1 in Carmel. 






Leaving Greenfield westbound on G16 the city quickly ends and the speed limit picks up along Elm Avenue.  The Santa Lucia Range is very apparent leaving the city.



West of Greenfield Elm Avenue/G16 approaches the Arroyo Seco River and crosses it on the 1943 one-lane Arroyo Seco Bridge.




On the opposite bank of the Arroyo Seco River G16 meets County Route G17 at Arroyo Seco Road.  At the time I took these photos someone had swiped the G16 and G17 reassurance shields but they have since been replaced.  Monterey County tends to maintain signage on County Routes fairly well.


Looking west on Arroyo Seco Road/G16 there was a rare but obvious snow fall in the higher elevations of the Santa Lucia Range.







G16 cuts splits from Arroyo Seco Road and continues west on Carmel Valley Road.  Along Carmel Valley Road G16 switches from two-lane road and a wide single lane through much of Santa Lucia Range.  There was significant rock fall at lower elevations due to the recent storms but nothing impassable.











G16 begins to rise into the Santa Lucia Range along a wide single-lane grade.  I want to say the elevation topped at about 2,600 feet above sea level which is about as close as I wanted to get to the snow.  The roadway doesn't have any hairpins and is generally very easy to traverse normally with oncoming traffic at slower speeds.




From the summit G16 dips down quickly in elevation and begins to follow Finch Creek.







There was some slide damage along Finch Creek with some tree fall.  I'd really hate to be down in a ditch like this with the winter rains being heavy.




As G16 moves away from Finch Creek the terrain starts to open again, pretty soon the center stripe returns.





Only to disappear and reappear again approaching Tassajara Road.






G16 follows Tularcitos Creek through one more one-lane section before meeting up with the Carmel River in Carmel Valley.






G16 junctions County Route G20/Laurles Grade in Carmel Valley.  G16 follows Carmel Valley Road alongside the Carmel River to a western terminus at CA 1.  Since I was heading to Monterey and I wasn't doing a route clinch I turned off of G16 onto G20 to reach CA 68.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third
Post a Comment
Read more