HYSTERICAL JOURNEY TO HISTORIC PLACES

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THE PLANK ROAD

In 1912 the community of San Diego was in a snit. Los Angeles had the railroad terminus. San Diego had better port facilities, but those facilities weren’t of much use without a rail connection. The next best thing to their way of thinking was to ship goods overland by roadway. A local business man named Ed Fletcher busily began jerking up so much chin music about the road hub that folks in Los Angeles decided they wanted it too. Fletcher accepted a challenge offered by the Los Angeles Examiner for an automobile race to Phoenix. Whichever city won the race would get the hub. There was, however, a catch. The Los Angeles cars were to be spotted with a 24 hour head start. With that sort of advantage Los Angeles did not see how they could possibly lose; even though San Diego already had an existing roadway to use. It was the old Butterfield Trail, and it already had relay stations for refueling. Huge sand dunes in Imperial County presented a major obstacle to the San Diego drivers. Those dunes would be very difficult to cross. Fletcher had fast cars and he had a plan for the dunes. He had arranged for horses to pull his cars across them. Fletcher made the run into Phoenix in the astonishing time of 19.5 hours. San Diego won the race and got their hub, but the dunes were still a problem. Funds were raised to build a plank road crossing and 13000 planks were shipped to the town of Holtville in 1915. The planks were laid end-to-end across the dunes and tacked together to cross members at the joints. It was a poor design because vehicles using the road had axles of different lengths and there was no provision made for passing traffic coming from the other direction. A new plank road was designed in which the planks were set side by side in prefabricated sections. The sections were assembled at the railroad siding in Ogilby, hauled by team and wagon to the roadway and set in place with a crane. At thousand foot intervals along the plank road additional sections were placed to accommodate oncoming traffic. The plank road served until 1926 when better road construction methods were found. The Quartermaster Depot Museum in Yuma has a beautifully restored Model T Ford on a section of plank road. Eventually the San Diego port facilities became an important Navy base and Los Angeles got its own highway hub. Even though he cheated with the horses Fletcher ran a helluva race.

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Photos

PLANK ROAD
The Plank Road is a National Historic Site located at the west end of the dunes on the south side of I-8. Go west from Yuma on I-8 past Ogilby Road and over the All American Canal to Buttercup off ramp. Cross over the highway and follow the frontage road to the site.

IMPERIAL SAND DUNES
This is a view of the sand dunes from Buttercup.

OGILBY
Nothing remains of the little community of Ogilby except for this lonely little cemetery beside the railroad tracks. The plank road sections were assembled here, but I doubt if anybody died from building the sections. Disease probably got them; or snake bite; or heat stroke.