Route Description
This route is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System.
From its southern terminus at I-5 in Wheeler Ridge (Wheeler Ridge Interchange) to Sacramento, Route 99 passes through the major cities of the San Joaquin Valley, including Bakersfield, Tulare, Visalia, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Modesto, and Stockton. A majority of this segment is built to freeway standards, However, there are portions that are a four-lane divided highway, including the section near Merced that has two at-grade intersections. The portion of the highway between Fresno and Modesto has been designation the "100th Infantry Battalion Memorial Highway."
The freeway sections connect and serve the numerous small cities—and large urban centers as well—that mostly support the agriculture and industry of the California Central Valley. These segments provide a fast medium-distance haulage route connecting agricultural production with related processing and packing businesses. Most of the freeway also parallels the Union Pacific's Fresno Subdivision.
In Sacramento, Highway 99 first joins with Interstate 80 Business as part of the Capital City Freeway, then runs concurrent with I-5. These SR 99 concurrences are not officially designated by Caltrans, but mapmakers often show it as such. SR 99 signage had existed along that route for motorists' convenience, but was removed in 2000, and replaced by SR 99 signs instead.
Highway 99 then splits from I-5 in Northern Sacramento, and then heads along the eastern segment of the Sacramento Valley through Yuba City, and Chico to its northern terminus at Route 36 near Red Bluff. Most of Highway 99 from Sacramento to Red Bluff is a two-lane highway, except for the parts in Yuba City and Chico that are built to freeway standards. The portion between Salida and Manteca is designated the "442nd Regimental Combat Team Memorial Highway."
Read more about this topic: California State Route 99
Famous quotes containing the words route and/or description:
“The route through childhood is shaped by many forces, and it differs for each of us. Our biological inheritance, the temperament with which we are born, the care we receive, our family relationships, the place where we grow up, the schools we attend, the culture in which we participate, and the historical period in which we live—all these affect the paths we take through childhood and condition the remainder of our lives.”
—Robert H. Wozniak (20th century)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)