CA 168 Road Work Update and Friant Dam

In my previous post about CA 168 West I noted that Caltrans was working on a new roundabout in Prather. The new roundabout is being built at the junction of CA 168 and Auberry Road which was a somewhat infamous local spot for traffic accidents. As of yesterday it appears the roundabout is functionally open although far from complete.

I ended up taking Auberry Road and Millerton Road west to Friant to back to San Joaquin Valley. That put me at the foot of the Friant Dam which was opened in 1942.

The Friant Dam impounds the San Joaquin River to create Millerton Lake which has a catchment area of about 1,600sq miles. The Friant Dam was constructed between 1939 and 1942 by the Central Valley Project. Today the Friant Dam is part of the Big Creek Hydroelectric Project and the lowest reservoir in the system. The scope of Big Creek Project can be seen on this map:

Big Creek Hydroelectric Project Map

What I find interesting about the Friant Dam project was that it flooded over the area that once the town of Millerton which was original Fresno County Seat from 1856 to 1874. Millerton was located on the San Joaquin River and was part of the Stock-Los Angeles Road which largely used to the Sierra Foothills to avoid what was once marsh lands in the San Joaquin Valley. Problems in Millerton began when the town flooded over in 1867 and was largely abandoned. Eventually county voters moved to the Fresno County seat to Fresno proper which was the final nail in the coffin for Millerton. Eventually Madera, Kings, Tulare, Inyo, Mono, and San Benito counties all split off from Fresno which is why the site of Millerton is now in Madera County. There wasn't much left of Millerton when the 1930s and the Friant Dam project got going. The Millerton Courthouse was preserved above the Friant Dam and still stands to this day.

The alignment of the Stockton-Los Angeles Road largely followed the alignment of several state highways in San Joaquin Valley such as; CA 59, CA 140, CA 145, CA 180, and CA 65.

Comments

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

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

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

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

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove