Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1913 — Through the Mountain Passes [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Through the Mountain Passes

PROBABLY the longest highway in the world is known to automobllist as the Pacific Highway. It extends from Vancouver to Tia Juana, affording a 2,000mile jaunt, and offering all sorts of scenery and experience. Mountain passes come with regularity on this long road, which, to the north of San Francisco, is marked with the Pacific Highway signs. To the south of the Golden Gate the emblematic road signs of the Automobile Club of Southern California give both the directions and the topography in picture signs that can be Interpreted at a mile a minute. In southern California the roads have been improved so rapidly that it is the paradise of the motorists and the new roads have meant making the mountain passes easier in grade as well as smooth of pavement. ' . • Crosses Ynez Range. San Marcos Pass, lying between the channel city of Santa Barbara, famed for its well preserved mission and its mountain drives, and the old mission of Santa Ynez, the first seat of learning on the Pacific, crosses the Santa Ynez range with 30 miles of beautiful scenery. As one lifts aloft from Santa Barbara side, the whole channel with its islands and countryside gradually unfolds. Maybe the 50-mile wide channel is hidden by banks of fog that hide all but the peaks of the islands and yet end sharply at the shore of Santa Barbary Bay, intensifying the Piedmont region and adding to the beauty of the billowing clouds that fill the channel while away beyond is the open sea, unending.

On the north side of San Marcos Pass the scenery is more wild and the climb more precipitous. As the grade doubles around the old hills far away views are unfolded and the ridges of. the range give a dizzy idea to the mind. Finally there is a glimpse of the snowfed mountain stream, the Santa Ynez river, where dwell the speckled beauties sought by the nimrods and found in abundance. The road follows along the river mile after mile as the altitude drops away,and finally the old ford, now well bridged, is reached and the level of the stream is found. Grand old oaks dwell in all the passes of the sunny southland. Thousands of years have they lived in their majesty, broad, massive, silent and grand beyond description. Some of the passes like the Tejon start from the floor of the desert on both sides and gradually unfold mountain torrent and majestic oak, whitened sycamore and beds of ferns gigantic in size. It is strange to leave the Mojave or the San Joaquin plains and enter the Tejon and, rising thousands of feet and in the hottest day, feel the atmosphere cool, vegetation grow rich and trees of wonderful size unfold. ' Here, only 40 miles away from the oil city of Bakersfield, possibly the most uncomfortable city in America in summer, is an ideal resort offering every inducement and yet containing not one single summer home. But all through it you find, the summer through, camping parties with wagon, pack horse or automobile, arriving, sojourning or departing. In some of the rocky defiles like the Cajon or the Idyllwlld there is little vegetation until the heights are reached. The Cajon is a gateway to the great American desert, SCO miles wide, so offers no beauty of big trees.. The Idyllwild, on the country, winds over the coast side of the great San Jacinto mountain, where snow is almost always found. Here the road passes through gigantic pines and through cool dells where mountain streams vie with distant saw mills in making music for the traveler, and the road rises to a height of over a mile. 7 Worth the Climb. There are 27 miles of climb on the Banning side of the Idyllwild pass, but the views are worth it You, who have studied the plain from Pike's Peark, the view from Mount Washington and similar sights will halt the car with wonder as the San Jacinto plain, all the way to the foothills that shut in Riverside, is unfolded. There a dozen towns are seen, great ranches, garden spots, ridges of hills on a great hecker-board like the view of the San Gabriel from Mount Wilson, but of another physiognomy. There are over 100 mountain passes in southern California and the eastcentral part of the state where are the highest points in the United State*. Mount Whitney 1* here sur-

rounded by more than a score of peaks, any of which is higher than Pike’s Peark. Here is the Switzerland of America that few have as yet discovered. The automobile now penetrates these wilds easily and swiftly. On El Camino Real, the old mission road binding together the string of 22 missions along the Pacific coast from San Diego north to Sonoma, some 700 miles of wonderful, come after Cahuenga, ten miles out of Los Angeles; Calabasas, meaning a gourd of the mock orange variety, found there by the mission padres; Cone jo, meaning a rabbit or hare, also named when the padres first tramped this trail; Casitas, meaning little houses; Cuesta, that lofty pass beyond the mission town of San Luis Obispo, and then the 40 mile Paso del Rebels, pass of the oaks; San Juan, near Mission San Juan Bautiste; Saint John, the Baptist, and many smaller passes like John, Los Gatos (the cats, presumably wild cats) —such are some of the names. Some of the new roads are going around the passes and losing the beauty by abandonment; but most of the roads of the California passes will remain like the everlasting hills —-they are the route of the least resistance.

A DEEP GORGE