Pacific Highway (United States) - History

History

An extensive section of the Pacific Highway (over 600 miles), from approximately Stockton, California to Vancouver, Washington, followed very closely the track of the Siskiyou Trail. The Siskiyou Trail was based on an ancient network of Native American footpaths connecting the Pacific Northwest with California's Central Valley.

By the 1820s, trappers from the Hudson's Bay Company were the first non-Native Americans to use the route of the future Pacific Highway to move between today's Washington State and "Alta California." During the second half of the 19th Century, mule trains, stagecoaches, and the Central Pacific Railroad also followed the route of the Siskiyou Trail.

In the early 20th century, around 1910, entrepreneur Sam Hill lobbied the governments of Washington and Oregon to build automobile roads along the path of the Siskiyou Trail, with the ultimate goal of building a paved auto route from Canada to Mexico.

Read more about this topic:  Pacific Highway (United States)

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
    In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
    Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
    Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)

    It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.
    Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

    The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)