"Everyone needs someone who will call and say, "get dressed, we're going on an adventure."
Making a list and doing a number of hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains was on my Updated Bucket List. While on a Harley Day-Ride to Camp Williams last May, the proprietor of the Camp Williams Cafe told me about the Road to Nowhere which is in San Gabriel Canyon - near the location of the Bridge to Nowhere. This was entirely new information to me at the time and has such an interesting history that I knew I must hike it.
Tracy and I decided to hike the Road to Nowhere on Saturday morning, September 9th. We met at 7:30 am and drove about 25 miles up Azusa Canyon. The Road to Nowhere splits off from East Fork Canyon Road (see photo below). A map shows the name Shoemaker Canyon Road, but the only sign at the intersection is "Dead End Road." The road is asphalt for about 2 miles, then, at a locked gate, it becomes a dirt road and that's where we began our hike at about 8:00 am.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
We proceeded up the canyon about 3 miles, passing through two long tunnels. At the end of the second tunnel the road ends and becomes a single-track trail through some pretty heavy brush and bushes for about 200 yards to a wide and deep gully. It appears that the trail might continue on the other side of the gully, but it would be a challenge beyond what we wanted to attempt to get through the gully.
It was only about 15 minutes after we began our hike that we met a group of hikers coming down. I asked them if they had already been to the second tunnel and they laughed and said they had. They said they had begun their hike at 5:00 am thinking they were on the trail to the Bridge to Nowhere. As they found out, they were on the wrong trail. They said they belonged to a group (they said the name of the group was complicated) that was on a type of scavenger hunt and said maybe Tracy and I could help them out. They asked what our middle names were (I guess if one of our names was the same as one of theirs it would satisfy one requirement) but we said both our middle names were the same (Clair) and they said that didn't help. Then they asked if one of us would do a "Trust Fall." They seemed like a trustworthy group, and Tracy is very trusting, so she said she would help them out. The group of hikers and her Trust Fall are shown below.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
I worked on road construction for seven years during my high school and college days and I was really impressed with the challenges they faced in building (or attempting to build) this road. Huge cuts through mountains were required, and in two cases they had to build tunnels through mountains too large to make a cut. The tunnels are about 2-tenths of a mile long, wide enough for a two-lane road, and the construction was very impressive. The photos below from the left: 1st row-shows one of the many cuts through mountains to build this road; Tracy & I somewhere along the road before reaching the tunnels; our first view of the first tunnel; and the entrance of the first tunnel-note the year completed (when photo is enlarged) was 1961. 2nd row- inside the first tunnel with Tracy doing her "Vanna White" at a Love sign that was made of small tiles - not spray paint; Tracy at the entrance to the 2nd tunnel; the east end of the 2nd tunnel showing some of the graffiti that was prevalent throughout both tunnels; and finally, the trail and gully out the east end of the second tunnel - i.e. the end of the Road to Nowhere.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
As we walked back down the road we could look into the valley below and see the trail for the Bridge to Nowhere - a hike we will be doing in October. The first photo shows the trail about a mile up from the "Bridge" trailhead, and the second photo shows the parking lot and the beginning of the trail. When we arrived back at our car there were a bunch of hikers unloading from three cars. They asked, "Is this the way to the Bridge to Nowhere?" I explained to them, as I had the earlier group, that they could look over the edge of where we were standing and see the parking lot for the Bridge to Nowhere down below us. Tracy says we need to get the Boy Scouts to make a sign to put at the bottom of the Road to Nowhere directing traffic further on down the highway if they want to go to the Bridge to Nowhere.
Click Photo to Enlarge - Use Arrows for Next Photo
A Little History: In the early days of the Cold War, our government decided that Los Angeles needed an escape route in the event of a nuclear attack. Building Shoemaker Canyon Road was felt at the time to be the solution. Started in the late 1950s, it was abandoned in the late 1960s, apparently after a combination of rock-slides, environmental concerns and cost over-runs got the best of them. The road was planned to connect Shoemaker Canyon Road to Angeles Crest Highway to create an escape route to the desert if a nuclear attack was ever launched against us. The road was apparently constructed with convict labor and got 5 miles up the canyon, even digging a couple of serious tunnels through the rock, before the project was terminated. Today this road (about 2 miles of asphalt, then about 3 miles of dirt) goes up the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, on the east-facing slope hundreds of feet above the water. And then it ends - thus, the name the Road to Nowhere. It appears the plan was doomed to failure from the beginning. At best it was a two-lane road, and anyone who has experienced Los Angeles freeways knows that a two-lane road wouldn't have gotten very many people out of the area.