Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What was the first highway built in California?
The first state road was authorized on March 26, 1895, when a law created the post of "Lake Tahoe Wagon Road Commissioner" to maintain the Lake Tahoe Wagon Road (the 1852 Johnson's Cut-off of the California Trail), now US 50 from Smith Flat - 3 miles (5 km) east of Placerville - to the Nevada state line. The 58 mile (93 km) road had been operated as a toll road until 1886, when El Dorado County bought it; the county deeded the road to the state on February 28, 1896. Funding was only enough for minimal improvements, including a stone bridge over the South Fork American River in 1901.
Also in 1895, on March 27, the legislature created the three-person Bureau of Highways to coordinate efforts by the counties to build good roads. The bureau traveled to every county of the state in 1895 and 1896 and prepared a map of a recommended system of state roads, which they submitted to the governor on November 25, 1896. The legislature replaced the Bureau of Highways with the Department of Highways on April 1, 1897, three days after it passed a law creating a second state highway from Sacramento to Folsom - another part of what became US 50 - to be maintained by three "Folsom Highway Commissioners". This was the last highway maintained by a separate authority, as the next state road, the Mono Lake Basin State Road (now part of SR 120), was designated by the legislature in 1899 to be built and maintained by the Department of Highways.
Originally numbered as Highway 1, Highway 2 is the oldest major highway in Alberta and the first to stretch north into the Peace Country. It was historically known as the Calgary and Edmonton Trail, Sunshine Trail, and the Blue Trail. Major changes include the construction of a divided freeway between Calgary and Edmonton in the 1960s, realignment along Deerfoot Trail in the 1980s, and twinning south of Calgary in the 1990s. A Highway 43 realignment in 1998 shortened Highway 2 by nearly to its current northern terminus in Grande Prairie; it previously extended west to British Columbia Highway 2 at the border. Several projects including median widening and interchange upgrades have been undertaken in the 2010s to increase the safety of the highway's busier sections, with further improvements either under construction or awaiting funding. Bypasses of Fort Macleod, Claresholm, and Nanton are planned as part of Alberta's effort to make its portion of the CANAMEX Corridor free-flowing from border to border.
Highway 2 is a core route in the National Highway System of Canada. The speed limit along most parts of the highway between Fort Macleod and Morinville is and in urban areas, such as through Claresholm, Nanton, Calgary and Edmonton, it ranges from to . During the winter, accidents are common on the stretch of the highway between Calgary and Edmonton as the weather can change rapidly and drivers underestimate the conditions, overwhelming emergency services attempting to respond. As the main north-south access in Alberta, Highway 2 is the preferred path of the CANAMEX Corridor. Between Fort Macleod and Edmonton, Highway 2 maintains no fewer than four lanes of traffic and is largely a freeway between Okotoks and Edmonton, with improvements underway to eliminate the at-grade crossings that remain.
The First Transcontinental Railroad (also called the Great Transcontinental Railroad, known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds. The Western Pacific Railroad Company built of track from Oakland/Alameda to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory (U.T.). The Union Pacific built from the road's eastern terminus at Council Bluffs near Omaha, Nebraska westward to Promontory Summit.
I-80 is the Interstate Highway that most closely approximates the route of the historic Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States. The highway roughly traces other historically significant travel routes in the Western United States: the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska, the California Trail across most of Nevada and California, the first transcontinental airmail route, and except in the Great Salt Lake area, the entire route of the First Transcontinental Railroad. From near Chicago east to near Youngstown, Ohio, I-80 is a toll road, containing the majority of both the Indiana Toll Road and the Ohio Turnpike. I-80 runs concurrently with I-90 from near Portage, Indiana, to Elyria, Ohio. In Pennsylvania, I-80 is known as the Keystone Shortway, a non-tolled freeway that crosses rural north-central portions of the state on the way to New Jersey and New York City.
The Pacific Highway Border Crossing connects the towns of Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia on the Canada–United States border. It is located on the Pacific Highway which runs from San Diego, California to Vancouver, British Columbia. What started as a dirt road alternative route to the Peace Arch Border Crossing in 1913, the Pacific Highway soon became the preferred route when it was paved in 1923. The part of the Pacific Highway that crosses the border here is now signed as British Columbia Highway 15 on the Canadian side and Washington State Route 543 on the American side. Since the 1970s, all commercial vehicles crossing the border between Blaine and Surrey are required to use this crossing. It is now one of the five busiest commercial border crossings on the US-Canada border.
In 1923, the New York State Legislature passed a law authorizing the construction of a highway connecting Route 24 (an unsigned legislative route that is now part of NY 30) to the new Veterans' Mountain Camp, an American Legion camp on Tupper Lake. The work was funded through appropriations defined in the law. The beginning of a state road to the camp came in 1924 when earth movers were brought in by the Harnathy Contracting Company, with construction beginning in early June. The project would include construction of a concrete bridge over the Bog River. However, Hanrathy was unable to finish the job as it went bankrupt, and a second firm, the Spadaccini Realty Construction Corporation of The Bronx was brought into finish the job, which began in June 1925.The bridge over the Bog River was completed on August 29, 1925 and they announced would be opened for traffic within ten days.The route did finally open in 1925, with the Veterans Camp opening on May 15, 1926. This road was extended from modern NY 30 north to a dead end at Warren Point. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, hundreds of state-maintained highways that did not yet have a designation were assigned one. The Veterans' Mountain Camp highway was designated as NY 421 by the following year.
In 1911, the Coleman DuPont Road, Inc. was established and construction on the highway began. By 1912, construction was interrupted by litigation challenging both the constitutionality of the law establishing the road building corporation and the need for DuPont to acquire such a large right-of-way. DuPont would narrow the proposed right-of-way to in order to compromise with opponents of the highway in addition to offering landowers whose properties were affected by the highway five times the assessed value of the land five years after the highway was completed. The DuPont Highway would end up being built on a alignment with a wide roadway. The DuPont Highway north of Milford would be both designed and constructed by Delaware State Highway Department (DSHD). A portion of the road north of Milford and from Frederica to Little Heaven were completed by 1920. The portion of the DuPont Highway from north of Milford to Frederica was under construction in 1920 and completed by 1923, the same year the last section of the entire Selbyville–Wilmington highway was completed near Odessa. When the U.S. Highway System was designated in 1926, this portion of the DuPont Highway became a part of US 113.
Before the U.S. Routes were designated, auto trails designated by auto trail associations were the main means of marking roads through the United States. In 1925, the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, recommended by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), worked to form a national numbering system to rationalize the roads. After several meetings, a final report was approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November 1925. They received complaints from across the country about the assignment of routes, so the Board made several modifications; the U.S. Highway System was approved in November 1926. As a result of compromises made to get the U.S. Highway System approved, many routes were divided, with alignments to serve different towns. In subsequent years, AASHTO called for such splits in U.S. Routes to be eliminated.
The episode follows the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad, the first transcontinental rail system, which would unite the eastern and western seaboards of the United States. Started in Sacramento by a consortium of local shopkeepers with no experience in building a railroad, the episode follows their efforts to build from west to east through the forbidding Sierra Nevada mountains with the help of Chinese labourers whilst simultaneously following the efforts of the workers of the Union Pacific to build from east to west, and their problems in dealing with the lawless nature of the Wild West, attacks by hostile Indians, and financial corruption and scandal.
At the same time, 1879-1881, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad was building across New Mexico and met the Southern Pacific at Deming, New Mexico March 7, 1881, completing the second transcontinental railroad (the first, the central transcontinental, was completed May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah). Acquiring trackage rights over the SP, from Deming to Benson, the Santa Fe then built a line southwest to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, completed October 1882, as its first outlet to the Pacific. This line was later sold to the Southern Pacific. The Southern Pacific continued building east from El Paso, completing a junction with the Texas & Pacific in December 1881, and finally in 1883, its own southern transcontinental, the Sunset Route, California to New Orleans, Atlantic waters to the Pacific. These railroads caused an early 1880s mining boom in such locales as Tombstone, Arizona, Bisbee, Arizona, and Santa Rita, New Mexico, the latter two world class copper producers. From Bisbee, a third sub-transcontinental was built across the Gadsden Purchase, the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, to El Paso by 1905, then to a link with the Rock Island line to form the Golden State Route. The EP&SW was sold to the Southern Pacific in the early 1920s.
In the 1930s, as part of the New Deal, the U.S. federal government constructed national parkways designed for recreational driving, and to commemorate historic trails and routes. As with other roads through national parks, these mostly undivided and two-lane parkways have lower speed limits, and are maintained by the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration jointly through the Federal Lands Transportation Program. An example is the Civilian Conservation Corps-built Blue Ridge Parkway in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and Virginia. Others are: Skyline Drive in Virginia; the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee; and the Colonial Parkway in eastern Virginia's Historic Triangle area. The George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Clara Barton Parkway, running along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., were also constructed during this era.
From its southern terminus with SR 1 in Santa Cruz, Route 17 begins as a five-lane freeway (narrows to four lanes after Pasatiempo Drive). From there, it proceeds through Scotts Valley. At the north end of Scotts Valley, it becomes a four-lane divided highway, with access at various points without interchanges, and begins a winding ascent of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The road crosses the Santa Clara/Santa Cruz county line through the Patchen Pass, commonly referred to as "The Summit", at an elevation of 1,800 feet (549 m), where there is an interchange with SR 35. Just north of the summit, a winding descent of the mountains begins, again with access at various points, mostly without grade separations, as far as Los Gatos. At Los Gatos, Route 17 becomes a freeway again. It expands to six lanes after an interchange with SR 85. This interchange has three levels; it is unusual in that the top level (CA 17) is at-grade, with the other levels below-grade. The number of lanes later expands to eight shortly before reaching its northern terminus at Interstate 280, where it continues as Interstate 880.
CanAm Highway is an international highway that connects Mexico to Canada through the United States. It travels along U.S. Route 85 (US 85) and Interstate 25 (I-25), passing through six U.S. states (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota) and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The CanAm highway in Canada comprises Saskatchewan Highway 35 (SK 35), SK 39, SK 6, SK 3, and SK 2. The route continues south in Mexico as Mexican Federal Highway 45 (Fed. 45), and north in Canada as SK 102 but are not labeled the CanAm highway.
The nearly highway's northern terminus is in Tumwater, Washington: the route remains along the Olympic Peninsula's coastal perimeter west, north, and east; the northernmost point on the highway is in Port Angeles. The southern terminus of US 101 is in Los Angeles at the East Los Angeles Interchange, the world's busiest freeway interchange.
The U.S. Highways in Alabama are the subset of the United States numbered highway system. These highways in the U.S. state of Alabama are maintained by the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT). There are 19 U.S. highways that travels through Alabama, totaling . U.S. Route 31 (US 31) is the highway with the longest segment in Alabama, with . The shortest is US 72 Alternate, crossing of North Alabama. One former U.S. highway existed in Alabama: US 241. It traveled through the eastern part of the state. US 241 was replaced by US 280 and US 431 in 1954.
State Route 101 (SR-101) is a long state highway located in the U.S. state of Utah. The route serves as a spur route into the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest through the cities of Wellsville and Hyrum, with an intermediate intersection with U.S. Route 89 (US-89) and US-91. SR-101 starts at an intersection of Main Street and SR-23 (Center Street) in Wellsville. Heading generally eastward, the highway terminates at the Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area. SR-101 was first designated in 1931 as a loop off SR-1 from Logan, south to Hyrum, and west to Wellsville.
The U.S. Highways in Utah are painted by the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). The United States Numbered Highway System is a nationwide system with only a small portion of its routes entering Utah. Originally, the State Road Commission of Utah, created on March 23, 1909 was responsible for maintenance, but these duties were rolled into the new UDOT in 1975. There are of U.S. Highways in the state. The longest is U.S. Route 89 at and the shortest is U.S. Route 89A at . Five former U.S. Highways exist in the state of Utah, all of which have been replaced by current interstate and U.S. Highways, with the most recent change being U.S. Route 666 redesignated as U.S. Route 491 in 2003.
The boundaries of California were defined by Spanish claims of Mexico, as part of the province of Alta California. The northern boundary of Spanish claims was set at 42 degrees latitude by the Adams–Onis Treaty of 1819. The states of Nevada and Utah, also originally part of Alta California, also use that line for their northern boundaries. The southern boundary, between California and Mexico, was established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican–American War in 1848. The line is about 30 miles north of the former Alta California southern boundary. The eastern boundary consists of two straight lines: a north-south line from the northern border to the middle of Lake Tahoe, and a second line angling southeast to the Colorado River. From that point, south-southwest of Davis Dam on Lake Mohave, the southeast boundary follows the Colorado River to the international border west of Yuma. The eastern and south-eastern boundaries were decided upon during the debates of the California Constitutional Convention in 1849.
Alberta Provincial Highway No. 2, commonly referred to as Highway 2 or the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, is a major highway in Alberta, Canada that stretches from the Canada–United States border through Calgary and Edmonton to Grande Prairie. Running primarily north to south for approximately , it is the longest and busiest highway in the province carrying nearly 170,000 vehicles per day in central Calgary. Between Edmonton and Fort Macleod, the highway forms a portion of Alberta's Export Highway and the CANAMEX Corridor. More than half of Alberta's 4 million residents live in the Calgary–Edmonton Corridor created by Highway 2.
A Pacific Railroad train did eventually reach Jefferson City four months later, but St. Louis' plan to be the starting point of the transcontinental railroad was unsuccessful. In 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, stretching from San Francisco to Chicago. The Pacific Railroad was renamed Missouri Pacific in 1867 and later became a part of Union Pacific in 1982.
Major highways are often named and numbered by the governments that typically develop and maintain them. Australia's Highway 1 is the longest national highway in the world at over and runs almost the entire way around the continent. China has the world's largest network of highways followed closely by the United States of America. Some highways, like the Pan-American Highway or the European routes, span multiple countries. Some major highway routes include ferry services, such as U.S. Route 10, which crosses Lake Michigan.
Due to the state's weak fiscal condition and corrupt politics, little progress was made until 1907, when the legislature replaced the Department of Highways with the Department of Engineering, within which there was a Division of Highways. California voters approved an US$18 million bond issue for the construction of a state highway system in 1910, and the first California Highway Commission was convened in 1911. On August 7, 1912, the department broke ground on its first construction project, the section of El Camino Real between South San Francisco and Burlingame, which later became part of California State Route 82. The year 1912 also saw the founding of the Transportation Laboratory and the creation of seven administrative divisions, which are the predecessors of the 12 district offices in use . The original seven division headquarters were located in:
The section of Highway 1 running through Big Sur is widely considered one of the most scenic driving routes in the United States, if not the world. The views are one reason that Big Sur was ranked second among all United States destinations in TripAdvisor's 2008 Travelers' Choice Destination Awards. The unblemished natural scenery owes much of its preservation to the highly restrictive development plans enforced in Big Sur; no billboards or advertisements are permitted along the highway and signage for businesses must be modestly scaled and of a rural nature conforming to the Big Sur region. The state of California designated the section of the highway from Cambria to Carmel Highlands as the first California Scenic Highway in 1965. In 1966, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson led the official scenic road designation ceremony at Bixby Creek Bridge. In 1996, the road became one of the first designated by the federal government as an "All-American Road" under the National Scenic Byways Program. CNN Traveler named McWay Falls as the most beautiful place in California.
In 1912, California began paving a section of the historic route in San Mateo County. Construction of a two-lane concrete highway began in front of the historic Uncle Tom's Cabin, an inn in San Bruno that was built in 1849 and demolished exactly 100 years later. There was little traffic initially and children used the pavement for roller skating until traffic increased. By the late 1920s, California began the first of numerous widening projects of what later became part of U.S. Route 101.
In 1892, Anna Pitcher of Pasadena, California initiated an effort to preserve the as-yet uncommemorated route of Alta California's Camino Real, an effort adopted by the California Federation of Women's Clubs in 1902. Modern El Camino Real was one of the first state highways in California. Given the lack of standardized road signs at the time, it was decided to place distinctive bells along the route, hung on supports in the form of an high shepherd's crook, also described as "a Franciscan walking stick." The first of 450 bells were unveiled on August 15, 1906, at the Plaza Church in the Pueblo near Olvera Street in Los Angeles.
Between 1869 and 1887, the Oregon & California Railroad Company built a railroad along this route, crossing Siskiyou Summit in 1887. In the mid-1910s, the pioneering Pacific Highway, later numbered as U.S. Highway 99, provided the first easy automobile access along the path of the trail. Interstate 5 was built in the 1960s along the route of the original 1820s Siskiyou Trail. About 4 miles (7 km) north of the California border, and just south of Ashland, Oregon, the highway crosses Siskiyou Summit, the highest point on I-5 (elevation ). The railroad and interstate highway deviate from the original trail in small ways according to the needs and engineering available to their builders.