Yungas Road - History

History

The road was built in the 1930s during the Chaco War by Paraguayan prisoners.

The Yungas Road was modernized during a 20 year period ending in 2006. The modernization included enlarging the carriageway from one to two lanes, constructing asphalt pavement, and building a new section between Chusquipata and Yolosa, bypassing to the north one of the most dangerous sections of the old 'Death Road'.

This new route features modern construction (bridges, drainage, etc.), multiple lanes, pavement, guardrails, and many other elements that make it considerably safer than the original route. The original North Yungas Road is currently much less used by traffic, although an increasing number of adventure travelers bike it for the thrills.

On 24 July 1983, a bus veered off the Yungas Road and into a canyon, killing more than 100 passengers in what is said to be Bolivia's worst road accident.

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