The Roosevelt Midland Trail

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The Roosevelt Midland Trail in Owens Valley

All text and graphics are courtesy of the University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
unless otherwise noted.
See USE NOTICE on Home Page.

The Midland Trail, also called the Roosevelt Midland Trail, is the name of a cross-country route established in the 1930s as U.S. 60. The entire route stretches from the Chesapeake to the Pacific Ocean and was constructed during the period where the emergence of the automobile spurred the creation of national road systems. The Midland Trail was a national auto trail spanning the United States from Washington, D.C., west to Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. The first road signed in 1913 was one of the first, if not the first, marked transcontinental auto trails in America.

The early routing of the Midland Trail, from east to west, began in Washington, D.C., and continued through Richmond and Clifton Forge, Virginia, to Charleston, West Virginia, and passed on through Morehead, Kentucky to Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky; Vincennes, Indiana; Salem, Illinois; St. Louis, Sedalia, and Kansas City, Missouri, to Topeka, Kansas; to Limon and Denver, Colorado.

From Denver, the original route split several ways to cross the Rocky Mountains via Berthoud Pass, Tennessee Pass, Cochetopa Pass, and Monarch Pass. All routes converged in Grand Junction, Colorado, and continued into Utah through Green River and Salt Lake City. The route then moved southward across the Salt Lake Desert through Iosepa, Orr’s Ranch, Fish Springs Ranch, and Ibapah, Utah.

In central Nevada, the highway continued across the Great Basin Desert through Ely and Tonopah, then turned south at Goldfield in the Amargosa Desert, west into California at Lida, and over the Inyo Mountains and the White Mountains through Westgard Pass.

At the junction in Big Pine, California, in the Owens Valley, the original routing then split into four options:

*	One route through Mammoth Lakes, Mono Lake, Yosemite, and Stockton to San Francisco.
*	The second is through Bridgeport, California, Lake Tahoe, and Placerville to Sacramento and then San Francisco.
*	The third went south through Independence and Mojave in the Mojave Desert, west through Tehachapi Pass to the San Joaquin Valley, and northward through Merced and Modesto to San Francisco.
*	The fourth continued southward from Mojave through Willow Springs to Los Angeles. By the time the Automobile Club of Southern California had prepared their 1917 state map, the fourth routing, through Mojave and Willow Springs to Los Angeles, had become the primary routing for the Midland Trail in California.

Realignment
Following a major realignment of the route and assumption into the state highway system around 1922, the main Midland Trail alignment in California bypassed early stagecoach-era stops at Freeman and Willow Springs and at the Neuralia railroad siding, and now routed through Red Rock Canyon to Mojave. The earlier alignment took a high line route to the west in the Sierra Nevada and Scodie Mountains foothills around it following the Los Angeles Aqueduct route past Jawbone Canyon, thence following the Southern Pacific railroad tracks through Rosamond and Lancaster and on to Los Angeles, following the route that was later assigned to U.S. Route 6—the Sierra Highway) in 1937.

Various alignments of this portion of the trail followed the late 19th century Twenty-mule team roads built to haul gold from the Cerro Gordo Mines across the Mojave Desert. and roads built for the early 20th century construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

All University of Michigan Photos Are Circa 1926

Midland Trail rest stop near Deep Springs

Clouds in Mono Lake Valley

Sierra Nevada Mountains in California

Sierra Nevada Mountain scene on the Midland Trail

Near Casa Diablo Hot Springs

Miles and miles of sagebrush on the Midland Trail

Graveled portion of the Midland Trail north of Indepencence, CA

Concrete portion of the Midland Trail - 8 ft. wide near Indepencence, CA

The Midland Trail near Lone Pine, CA - THEN

The Midland Trail near Lone Pine, CA - NOW
(Photo courtesy of Jeremy Robinson)

Repairing a tire on the Midland Trail

Overhauling a car on the Midland Trail

On the Midland Trail in Owens Valley

On the Midland Trail in Little Lake, CA

Old railroad grade on the Midland Trail near Little Lake, CA

Studying maps on the Midland Trail

Midland Trail marking crew from the Automobile Club of Southern California

The Midland Trail in Owens Valley, CA
(Photo courtesy of eBay)

Marking crew from the Automobile Club of Southern California meet some travelers on the Midland Trail

West of Inyokern on the Midland Trail

Stuck in the sand on the Midland Trail

	Ed Turner, MWPT Packer and Author
	1946 Interstate Telegraph Company Phone Book for Inyo, Kern, and Mono Counties
	Trail Signs
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This page was last updated on 25 November 2024