History
During the Gold Rush, SR 120 was originally known as Big Oak Flat Road, after the village of Big Oak Flat through which it passes in the Sierra foothills. It was a pack trail from Stockton which became popular with prospectors about 1849. By 1874 it was a wagon road which extended to the Yosemite Valley.
In 1921, the California State Assembly authorized San Joaquin County to transfer the county road connecting Manteca with then-Route 5 (now I-5) at Mossdale to the state. It was numbered Route 66, as was a 1933 extension from Manteca east to Route 13 in Oakdale. Also in 1933, Route 40 was extended east from Mono Lake to Route 76 (US 6) at Benton. The route from Manteca to Benton was marked as Sign Route 120 in 1934, and was soon extended west to Mossdale, replacing what had been part of U.S. Route 99W.
Read more about this topic: California State Route 120
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)