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Saturday, Jul. 04, 2009

Postcards from Henness Pass: Once famous pass still picturesque

That you are famous at one time does not guarantee that you will stay famous." Who said so?

I have no idea whom I am quoting. Maybe no one. Maybe I just made it up. But the thought was much on my mind on June 20, when, with two family members, I traveled from Nevada City across Henness Pass to the east side of the Sierra.

Henness Pass was once quite famous.

It was the route from Marysville to Virginia City, Nev. From near Camptonville it ran eastward, mostly atop a ridge, dropped down to where today you find two reservoirs, Milton and Jackson Meadows, and then angled southeast to Verdi, and on to Virginia City.

 The name traces to Patrick Henness who pioneered the route in 1849 or 1850. In 1852, work on the primitive road resulted in a toll road passable for wagons.

Through the rest of the decade traffic kept building to the point that freight wagons were limited to travel by day and passenger stagecoaches to travel by night.

In those years, the only pass more traveled than Henness was the route through Placerville and over what became known as Echo Summit (Highway 50 today).

In 1859, silver mines opened in the Virginia City area, and this caused traffic over Henness to increase. 

In the late 1860s, however, California gold mining diminished substantially.

Not only that, but the Central Pacific Railroad got track laid over the Sierra, and that resulted in the virtual end of travel over Henness. Horses and mules usually covered about 20 miles a day. Trains did better, much better. It was no contest.

(Incidentally, the first passenger train to cross the Sierra ran on June 18, 1868. On May 10, 1869, the golden spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, and that marked the completion of the transcontinental railroad.)

Henness Road with dis-use soon became may-I-say dis-famous.

Fast forward to today.

Ask people up and down the state if they have heard of Henness Pass and they are apt to say no. Even in the neighborhood -- I'm thinking of Grass Valley and Nevada City -- it's easy to find folks who have never heard of it while it's hard to find folks who have actually driven it.

I talked with one knowledgeable person who said he would not go across without a four-wheel drive vehicle.

I talked with someone else familiar with the route and got a different opinion.

He said, "In the summer if you exercise reasonable caution you can drive almost any car right through."

I decided I needed a third opinion, and that it should be mine.

Let me share our experience. We did set out in a four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer but we never needed that added capability and we thought it unnecessary.

We left Nevada City (49/20 intersection) at 8:40 a.m. (and were back at 4:20 p.m.) Up Highway 49 we went for 19 miles. There we turned right on a road leading to the community of Pike.

After 13 miles we came to an intersection. There a right turn and a roundtrip digression of seven miles took us to the hamlet of Alleghany. The sign said population 12, elevation 4,419 feet.

The thing keeping the community going is a gold mine, "The 16 to 1," still operating well over a century after its founding (the company incorporated in 1896).

Back on the main road, we breezed along on smooth two-lane pavement. We were traveling a fairly straight ridge dividing the Middle Fork and the North Fork of the Yuba River.

We were making good time until 22 miles from Highway 49 where the pavement abruptly ended. There we encountered two dirt roads. We chose to keep right. Later we learned that, had we gone left, the road would eventually return us to the road we chose.