Route information | |
---|---|
Length | 853.4 mi [1] (1,373.4 km) Length of the original route along the National Old Trails Road and north through Searchlight, NV. |
History | Arrowhead Trails Association formed in 1916, and incorporated in California on December 7, 1916. |
Major junctions | |
South end | Los Angeles, CA |
North end | Salt Lake City, UT |
Location | |
Country | United States |
States | California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah |
Highway system | |
Official name | Arrowhead Trail (1914-1924) |
Reference no. | 168 [2] |
Official name | Arrowhead Trail - Henderson |
Reference no. | 197 [3] |
The Arrowhead Trail or Arrowhead Highway was the first all-weather road in the Western United States that connected Los Angeles, California with Salt Lake City, Utah by way of Las Vegas, Nevada. Built primarily during the auto trails period of the 1910s, prior to the establishment of the United States Numbered Highway System, the road was replaced in 1926 by U.S. Route 91 (US 91) and subsequently Interstate 15 (I-15). [4] [5] Small portions of the route in California, Nevada (Las Vegas Boulevard) and Utah are sometimes still referred to by the name, or as Arrow Highway.
Starting in 1915, auto racing champion Charles H. Bigelow drove the entire route many times to generate publicity for the road. [2]
The Arrowhead Trail initially took a longer route via present U.S. Route 95 and former U.S. Route 66 between Las Vegas and Needles, California, as the more direct Old Spanish Trail was in very poor condition. [6] [7] The "Silver Lake cutoff", which would save about 90 miles (145 km), [8] was proposed by 1920, [9] and completed in 1925 as an oiled road by San Bernardino County. [10] [11]
Both the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads and the State of Nevada urged the inclusion of the cutoff route into each state's highway systems, the former as part of the federal aid highway connecting Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, [12] and the California State Legislature did that in 1925, [13] with it becoming an extension of Route 31. (Across the state line in Nevada, State Route 6 continued through Las Vegas to Arizona.) The initial plan for the U.S. Highway system simply stated that Route No. 91 would run from Las Vegas "to an intersection with Route No. 60" (which became US 66 in 1926), [4] but in 1926 the cutoff was chosen, ending at US 66 at Daggett, just east of Barstow. [5] [14]
The original routing south from Las Vegas to Needles later became part of US 95 in 1940. The new "cutoff route" was added to the federal-aid secondary system in 1926, [15] which helped pay for a mid-1930s widening and paving, including some realignments (parts of the old road are now known as Arrowhead Trail). The new routing generally followed the present I-15, except through Baker (where it used Baker Boulevard) and into Barstow (where it followed former SR 58 to First Avenue, ending at Main Street, which carried US 66). [16] [ citation needed ] It entered San Bernardino on Cajon Boulevard, then followed the route of Arrow Highway between San Bernardino and Los Angeles. This route is still called Arrow Route or Arrow Highway through parts of Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, Montclair and Claremont as well as other cities between Irwindale and San Bernardino. [17]
The Clark County, Nevada sections of the trail are marked by Nevada Historical Markers 168 and 197. [2] [3]
A monument to the Arrowhead Trail lies across from the north end of the Terrible's Hotel & Casino [formerly the Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall] property's entrance in Jean, Nevada. It is from here that Las Vegas Boulevard begins and proceeds north to the Las Vegas Strip.
U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The highway, which became one of the most famous roads in the United States, ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before terminating in Santa Monica in Los Angeles County, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km).
Interstate 15 (I-15) is a major Interstate Highway in the Western United States, running through Southern California and the Intermountain West. I-15 begins near the Mexican border in San Diego County and stretches north to Alberta, Canada, passing through the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. The Interstate serves the cities of San Diego, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Idaho Falls, and Great Falls. It also passes close to the urban areas of Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties, California. The stretches of I-15 in Idaho, Utah, and Arizona have been designated as the "Veterans Memorial Highway". The southern end is at a junction with I-8 and State Route 15 (SR 15) in San Diego, and the northern end is at a connection with Alberta Highway 4 at the Sweetgrass–Coutts Border Crossing.
The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, except for the headwaters and several bedrock gorges in the lower reaches.
State Route 91 (SR 91) is a major east–west state highway in the U.S. state of California that serves several regions of the Greater Los Angeles urban area. A freeway throughout its entire length, it officially runs from Vermont Avenue in Gardena, just west of the junction with the Harbor Freeway, east to Riverside at the junction with the Pomona and Moreno Valley freeways.
U.S. Route 91 or U.S. Highway 91 is a 172.7-mile-long (277.9 km) north–south United States highway running from Brigham City, Utah, to Idaho Falls, Idaho, in the U.S. states of Idaho and Utah. Despite the "1" as the last digit in the number, US 91 is no longer a cross-country artery, as it has mostly been replaced by Interstate 15. The highway currently serves to connect the communities of the Cache Valley to I-15 and beyond. Prior to the mid-1970s, US 91 was an international commerce route from Long Beach, California, to the Canada–US border north of Sweetgrass, Montana. US 91 was routed on the main streets of most of the communities it served, including Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas and State Street in Salt Lake City. From Los Angeles to Salt Lake, the route was built along the corridor of the Arrowhead Trail. A portion of the highway's former route in California is currently State Route 91.
The State Scenic Highway System in the U.S. state of California is a list of highways, mainly state highways, that have been designated by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) as scenic highways. They are marked by the state flower, a California poppy, inside either a rectangle for state-maintained highways or a pentagon for county highways.
A vast network of interconnected freeways in the megaregion of Southern California serves a population of over 23 million people. The Master Plan of Metropolitan Los Angeles Freeways was adopted by the Regional Planning Commission in 1947 and construction began in the early 1950s. The plan hit opposition and funding limitations in the 1970s, and by 2004, only some 61% of the original planned network had been completed.
Yermo is an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California. It is 13 miles (21 km) east of Barstow on Interstate 15, just south of the Calico Mountains. Its population was estimated at 1,750 in 2009.
National Old Trails Road, also known as the Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, was established in 1912, and became part of the National Auto Trail system in the United States. It was 3,096 miles (4,983 km) long and stretched from Baltimore, Maryland to California. Much of the route follows the old National Road and the Santa Fe Trail. Following its decommission, the western portion was later integrated into U.S. Route 66.
Las Vegas Boulevard is a major road in Clark County, Nevada, United States, best known for the Las Vegas Strip portion of the road and its casinos. Formerly carrying U.S. Route 91 (US 91), which had been the main highway between Los Angeles, California and Salt Lake City, Utah, it has been bypassed by Interstate 15 and serves mainly local traffic with some sections designated State Route 604.
Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park is a state park of Nevada. It contains the Old Mormon Fort, the first permanent structure built in what would become Las Vegas fifty years later. In present-day Las Vegas, the site is at the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Washington Avenue, less than one mile north of the downtown area and Fremont Street. This is the only U.S. state park located in a city that houses the first building ever built in that city. The fort was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 1972. The site is memorialized with a tablet erected by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1997, along with Nevada Historical Marker #35, and two markers placed by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers.
The Midland Trail, also called the Roosevelt Midland Trail, was a national auto trail spanning the United States from Washington, D.C., west to Los Angeles, California and San Francisco, California. First road signed in 1913, it was one of the first, if not the first, marked transcontinental auto trails in America.
U.S. Route 66 is a part of a former United States Numbered Highway in the state of California that ran from the west in Santa Monica on the Pacific Ocean through Los Angeles and San Bernardino to Needles at the Arizona state line. It was truncated during the 1964 renumbering and its signage removed in 1974. The highway is now mostly replaced with several streets in Los Angeles, State Route 2 (SR 2), SR 110, SR 66, San Bernardino County Route 66 (CR 66), Interstate 15 (I-15), and I-40.
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