Echo Summit is a mountain pass (also known as Johnson Pass) located in eastern El Dorado County, California, USA. At an elevation of 7,382 ft (2,250 m), it is the highest point on U.S. Route 50 in California, which traverses it at postmile 66.48 between Twin Bridges and Meyers, south of Lake Tahoe.
The "Sierra Nevada Southern Route" (aka the "Pioneer Route") of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States of America, was routed over Echo Summit in 1913. (The "Sierra Nevada Northern Route" of the Lincoln Highway goes over Donner Pass.)
Echo Summit is notable for being the location of the high altitude Olympic Trials, held September 6–16, 1968 and Training Camp, in anticipation of the high altitude Olympics in Mexico City later in 1968. Four world records were achieved during the trials. One of the first Tartan tracks was constructed in the middle of the forest for this event. After its use, the track was torn out and reinstalled at nearby South Tahoe Middle School, where it survived until 2006.
Famous quotes containing the words echo and/or summit:
“To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking—and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.”
—Maurice Blanchot (b. 1907)
“The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,—their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb the summit of Ktaadn.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)