Page:Big Oak Flat Road (HAER No. CA-147) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/3



II. HISTORY

This is one in a series of reports prepared for the Yosemite National Park Roads and Bridges Recording Project. HAER No. CA-117, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK ROADS AND BRIDGES, contains an overview history of the park roads.

The Big Oak Flat Road was the second wagon road to enter Yosemite Valley. Although relocated for most of its distance through the park, the route (now California Highway 120) remains the most important entrance to Yosemite from the north. Built as a toll road in a race to provide the first road to the Valley, the route carried the majority of park traffic from central and northern California before the completion of the Yosemite Valley Rail Road and the All Year Highway [HAER No. CA-150]. Most of the original route has been abandoned, although several short stretches remain open as scenic drives or service roads. The New Big Oak Flat Road is a modern, "high-gear" motor road affording users splendid views of the Crane Creek watershed and more distant views of the San Joaquin Valley.

The route had its origins in a pack trail, called the "Big Oak Flat Trail," after the early California mining community of Big Oak Flat in Tuolumne County through which it passed. About 1857, Tom McGee, a pack operator and saloonkeeper in that community, reopened the western portion of the old trans-Sierran Mono Indian trail which crossed the Sierra divide to the east. McGee's portion connected Big Oak Flat via the South Fork of the Tuolumne River with the Coulterville route at Crane Flat. This route received less use than a roughly-parallel free trail from Coulterville which opened at about the same time. The Big Oak Flat Trail did, however, draw a number of visitors from Stockton, to which it was conveniently situated. Yosemite-bound tourists took the Coulterville Trail on to the Valley from Crane Flat. McGee's trail continued on towards the mines to the east, leaving the shared route at Tamarack Flat.

In September 1868, a cartel of businessmen in Tuolumne County organized the "Chinese Camp and Yo Semite Turnpike Company" to construct a road from the mining labor settlement of Chinese Camp (30 miles west of Big Oak Flat) to Yosemite Valley. The group filed a Declaration of Intention which stated that the road was to extend from Chinese Camp "south easterly to Jacksonville Hill, thence to the Tuolumne River south of Woods Creek to a point known as the canyon, thence by Bridge to south side of said river thence up said river to Moccasin Creek, thence up Moccasin Creek to Newhall and Culbertson's Ranch, thence up Big Oak Flat Hill through Big Oak Flat, First Garrote and Second Garrote to Big Gap. Thence up the ridge to Pilot Peak Ridge, thence through Hazel Green to Crain [sic] Flat, thence on south side of the ridge to Tamarac [sic] Flat, thence to head of the Yo Semite Trail." The road would follow in part the route of the Big Oak Flat Trail. By the end of 1868, the wagon road had been built across part of Tuolumne County from Elwells' (now Colfax Springs) to Hardin's Ranch, largely by the latter's proprietor, Johnny Hardin.