Between the Wars, the Road from LA to Palms Springs

The 1924 All Paved Hwy From L.A. To Palm Springs

Below is a Esri StoryMap I made showing the history of the first all-paved highway connecting Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Coupled with a booming economy and rising popularity of the automobile paved roads soon became a nessacery norm.

A few notable details about the map is that there has been more than one route traced in some areas such as the area where US99 turns into SR111, if heading into Palms Springs. This is to show the continuation of US99 as well as the rest of the original routing through Thousand Palms. There is actually a lot of original concrete not only visible, but still in use. This part of Varner Rd is a great example, for some reason the city removed the layer of asphalt covering the original road which revealed almost pristine concrete from the original US99 routing.

Another example is seen in Redlands, Esri’s headquarters, not only is part of Redlands Blvd. apart of the original US99 routing but still uses the original 16’ concrete slab with 2 feet asphalt extensions on each side added sometime later.

During this time before the freeway system E. State street was the original US99 routing through Redlands. Roosevelt Rd. was also the two lane road to enter into Redlands at the time (seen below).

Due to the limitations of an iframe only the links to the maps are showing within the story map, this may be better since it opens the maps in a separate window for better viewing.

To view a Georeferenced map that includes maps from the 1920’s click here, it’s neat and is basically the whole project without the StoryMap.

To view the whole StoryMap without it being embedded in an iframe click here

Some information is sourced from a context statement put together by the city of Palm Springs: Linked here