Page:Big Oak Flat Road (HAER No. CA-147) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/7

 from Dr. McLean and his backers, the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company won approval on 17 February 1874. The act stated in part:

"C. B. Cutting, D. B. Newhall, L. D. Gobin, A. Halsey, and George E. Sprague, residents of Tuolumne County, State of California, for themselves and their successors, directors of the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, are hereby granted the right and privilege, for ten years, from the first day of March, eighteen hundred and seventy-four, for the use, behoof and benefit of the Yosemite Turnpike Road Company, and their assigns, to enter upon, and to construct and maintain a turnpike or wagon road over the Yosemite Grant, from the northerly line of said grant to the level of the Yosemite Valley..."

The Yosemite Turnpike Road Company immediately began plans to extend the wagon road down from Gentry's, following the "improved" trail. The construction workers were housed at "Camp Andross," 2 miles below Gentry's and the midpoint of the final section. The company engaged five Italian wall-builders, who had offered to construct the cliff-side stretch for $16,000 plus $5,000 worth of materials. The $16,000 was loaned by Andrew Rocca of Big Oak Flat, and the new phase of work began. The skilled Italians built the required stone retaining walls without mortar, wedging some stones into place, and using anchor and tie stones to bind the walls together. Good chinking and equal distribution of fill behind the face helped the walls bear the considerable weight of the road. The final part segment, which utilized a number of sharp switchbacks, had a grade of 16 percent. This troublesome 3-mile stretch, known as "the Zigzag," was constructed in five months.

The final section below Gentry's was surveyed by John Conway, a former mining engineer who had built the Four-Mile and other Yosemite trails, and who laid out the first circuit road in Yosemite Valley. He also oversaw the final phase of the work, which began in late 1873, and was half-completed when heavy snows prevented further efforts. The construction work resumed in March 1874. Conway declared that the "Anti-Monopoly Road of the Tuolumnites" would be finished by the time the snow could be removed from the upper section above Gentry's. Conway stated that as "cultivated science has pronounced the Yo Semite region impracticable for road building," he was relying on uncultivated science. His crews were working 11-hour days in an effort to beat the "Monopoly (Coulterville) Road" to completion.

This final phase of construction brought on a race to completion with the Coulterville Road, as Dr. McLean simultaneously forwarded more men and supplies to finish his route. In the end, the Chinese Camp and Yo Semite Turnpike missed being the first road into the Valley by less than one month. The road was completed on 17 July 1874, only 29 days behind the rival Coulterville Road. A "grand jollification" was held, consisting of a procession with 600 participants, addresses by James M. Hutchings [who, incidentally, had greeted the Coulterville Road group a few weeks earlier] and other VIPs, and music by the Sonora Band. The Sonora Union Democrat recorded