History
SR 178 was one of the routes created with the third bond act of 1919. It defined a route 202 miles long between Santa Maria and Freeman Junction through Bakersfield. Freeman does not exist today; it was originally located near (and later at) the junction of SR 178 and SR 14. The route was defined as Legislative Route 57. The 1919 bond act also created the first segment of LRN 58. The route was extended several times since 1919. In 1933, the final segment was added to LRN 58, which created a route from US 101 near Santa Margarita to the Nevada state line via Bakersfield. Construction on the route between Bakersfield and Isabella through Kern Canyon started in 1922. Progress moved slowly, as sheer rock walls had to be blasted with dynamite. In 1931, 9 years after construction started, the 26 mile highway segment was completed.
In 1933, with the creation of signed routes, portions of LRN 57 and LRN 58 would be signed as Route 178. LRN 58 would be signed between Route 33 and US 99, and LRN 57 would be signed between US 99 and US 395. Later, in 1947, LRN 212 was created, and defined to run from US 395 at the junction with Route 178 east to the Nevada state line. It was an unsigned route.
In the period 1950-53 a portion of SR178 in Lake Isabella was rerouted around the Isabella Auxiliary Dam. The dam was built over the old route and parts of it are inundated by Isabella Lake. The new route goes over the dam's southern abutment and along the shoreline of Isabella Lake toward Onyx.
In 1964 all of the California routes were renumbered. LRN 58 was dropped from Route 178 and combined with the eastern portion of the decommissioned US 466 (also defined as part of LRN 58) to created SR 58. The remaining Route 178 was combined with LRN 212 to create SR 178. It was originally defined to start at SR 99 in Bakersfield, but later that year it was changed to simply start in Bakersfield. This change was probably done to avoid a cosign with SR 58 along 23rd/24th St. After SR 58 was moved to the freeway south of Brundage Ln. in 1976, SR 178 was extended west to SR 99.
Construction on the initial freeway in Bakersfield was completed in 1968. It ran from M St, on the eastern edge of Downtown, through East Bakersfield to Haley St. Eastern extensions have been constructed since 1968, one interchange at a time as the need arises. In the Kern Canyon section, which is between Bakersfield and the Kern River Valley, a bypass route was identified in 1964. By 1968, a deed from the US forestry service issued an easement to the State for the construction of the highway through National Forest lands. The first phase of construction was completed in 1974, which created a short freeway near Lake Isabella and a 60’ wide expressway extending west to China Garden. Subsequent phases were not funded.
Read more about this topic: California State Route 178
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)