Plank Road - Felicity, CA
Posted by: 
bluesnote
N 32° 42.615 W 114° 55.390
11S E 694658 N 3621073
A CA state marker, just a few hundred feet north of the Mexican border.
Waymark Code: WMQC0E
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 02/01/2016
Views: 16
The plaque says, "This unique plank road, seven miles long, was the only means early motorists had of crossing the treacherous Imperial sand dunes. The 8-by-12-foot sections were moved with a team of horses whenever the shifting sands covered portions of the road. Double sections were placed at intervals to permit vehicles to pass."
Verification from 'Drive the OST' (
visit link) , "West of Yuma lies the Algodones Dunes — great sand hills, some 200 feet high, constantly shifting and once complicating the development of a transcontinental highway to San Diego. The first attempt to conquer the desert was to construct a moveable plank road following the contours of the sand dunes. Financed privately by Col. Ed Fletcher and the Cabrillo Club of San Diego, the simple technology consisted of placing parallel tracks of three 1-foot wide planks. The California State Highway Commission later improved the road, replacing the flimsy track with 4 x 12 feet planks arranged in 8 x 12 feet intervals. Constructed at a cost of $8,500 a mile, the portable road carried transcontinental traffic over the sand hills until it was replaced with a concrete highway in 1926.
A short section of the plank road survives on BLM land and is commemorated as a California Historical Landmark. To access this unique artifact, exit Instate 8 at Gray’s Well Road and head west on a stretch of old US 80 south of the interstate approximately 3.3 miles. The plank road will be on your right at the bottom of a dune."