\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRecreation and camping areas in California.\u00a0Ford treasury of station wagon living. 1957-58.
\nIt\u2019s really weird how this map shows US 91 just sort of ending in the desert, when wikipedia documents that it went all the way down to Long Beach. This just came to my attention because as this map is constructed, there was no direct federal route between LA and Vegas, which is again like really weird\u00a0
\nThere was a big renumbering of highway routes in California in 1964 to deal with the way that a history of road construction by multiple authorities left absurd disjunctions and redundancies between named, numbered, and natural through-routes.
\noh another thing that\u2019s worth pointing out. all those red-triangle campgrounds along the coast? the coast in that area is like a tiny sliver between the ocean and the mountains, those were areas that were owned by early land barons who raised food there when California was undeveloped and the imperial trade outpost of San Francisco had to be fed by coastal shipping or the Sacramento Delta
\nlater on when they developed inland transportation the barons ended up giving those lands (now useless, because they\u2019ve got terrible overland access) to the state as part of a deal to blow off a ga-huge tax bill
\nwhen I rode Blue Bitch up the PCH you\u2019d see these campgrounds and recreation areas clustered in packs around old watering holes in areas that seemed mostly based on the tourist traffic up the coast
\nmaintained at the request, I assume, of the lobby for people who actually live like those car ads
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