Page:Tioga Road (HAER No. CA-149) written historical and descriptive data.pdf/14

 Canyon of the Tuolumne for the next phase of the project.74 The National Park Service determined to reconstruct the Tioga Road in three phases. The first would involve rebuilding the road between Tioga Pass and Cathedral Creek, 2 miles west of Tuolumne Meadows. The second phase called for the relocation of the eastern end of the road. The old Carl Inn-Aspen Valley-White Wolf section would largely be abandoned and replaced by a new surfaced road from Crane Flat (the junction with the new Big Oak Flat Road) to White Wolf. The work on these two sections would be done simultaneously. Funding for the reconstruction came in part from funds made available under an agreement with the City of San Francisco, under which roads earlier proposed for the Hetch Hetchy area were rejected. The city in turn transferred the road building funds to the National Park Service for other projects. The Park Service allocated the funds for the reconstruction of the two end sections of the Tioga Road. The central 21 mile section between McSwain Meadow and Cathedral Creek was not rebuilt until the late 1950s.

Construction of the 12-mile section between Tioga Pass and Cathedral Creek was authorized on 9 September 1932, and $250,000 was allocated for the project. The contracts were advertised on 16 September and the bids were opened on 11 October at the San Francisco office of the Bureau of Public Roads. C. G. Willis & Sons, which submitted the low bid of $225,106, was chosen as the contractor. The company established a work camp at Budd Creek near Tuolumne Meadows in November 1932, using relocated prefabricated plasterboard housing from the recently completed Olympic Games at Los Angeles.75 However, due to a long winter season setting in, work could not commence on the road until the following July.

That summer, the clearing and grading work began and reinforced concrete or corrugated metal pipe culverts were placed at watercourses. The firm employed forty-five men, and used a 1 1/4-cubic yard power shovel and three 80-hp and one 60-hp caterpillar tractors. Gravel for fill work and masonry construction was taken from the Tuolumne River with a dragline; sand came from Lee Vining, and the cement from southern California. Willis & Sons also began work with twenty men on the new bridge across the Tuolumne River at Tuolumne Meadows [HAER No. CA-I09]. The excavation for the bridge's piers and abutments was done in August, and by the end of the month, the masonry work was complete for abutment #1 and pier #l.76 Work was fairly well along when the first snows put an end to that year's construction activity.

A proposed 'High Line' route for the central part of the road was inspected in September 1933 by Wosky and Bureau of Public Roads engineers Tolen and Tom Roach. This route would have carried the road behind Mount Hoffman and through the Ten Lakes region,77 but was rejected in favor of rebuilding the route along Tenaya Lake. On the western end, a survey crew under the direction of BPR engineer C. M. Sweetser surveyed the 12.75 mile section between Crane Flat and White Wolf in the late summer and fall.78

The new road was constructed to meet the revised Forest Highway Standard of 1932. Specifications for the new project called for a 26' foot width on fill sections and 28' feet in cuts. The road would have a 5 percent ruling grade and maximum grade of 6 percent. The minimum radius for curves was 350'. No retaining walls were to be used; instead, hand-laid rock embankments would be employed to avoid the appearance of road scars. At the request of the NPS landscape architecture division, clearing would be done to open up scenic vistas.79

Federal assistance programs during the Great Depression helped with the reconstruction of the Tioga Road. Crews from the Public Works Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Emergency Conservation Works programs