Oregon the Picturesque
9781465632401
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Twenty thousand miles of motoring had made us familiar with most of the highways and byways of California lying south of San Francisco. Some of these roads we covered but once in our wanderings and others many times—only a few outlying sections and odd corners have so far escaped us and these we hope to add to our conquests in due course of time. I do not think it possible for any motor enthusiast ever to grow weary of the wonderland of Southern California with its miles and miles of splendid road, its endless variety of scenery, and its enlivening dash of historic romance. But we had done all this, and when the wanderlust came upon us again we cast about, temporarily, of course—for we felt that Sunset Land would eventually claim us again—for new fields of adventure with our companion of the wind-shod wheels. And so it happened with us and we found ourselves scanning with no small degree of interest and anticipation maps of the vast mountain-studded country stretching from San Francisco to the Columbia River. We had met infrequent motorists who had penetrated parts of this comparatively unfamiliar region and their tales were enough to arouse our curiosity and to intensify our desire to explore these virgin fastnesses of shining lakes, vast forests, and rugged hills, but the contemplation of such an undertaking caused us some uneasiness and misgiving, we are free to confess. Here one will not find a system of smooth, well-engineered boulevards, but is confronted by a series of widely dissevered mountain trails which climb long, laborious grades or creep along precipitous slopes, deep with dust in late summer and stony and rough at all times. Indeed, many of the roads we planned to traverse are closed by snowdrifts during the greater part of the year and the preferable time for touring is from July to September inclusive. Later, one may encounter the first showers of the rainy season—as it happened with ourselves—and many of these mountain grades are described as “impassable” in wet weather. One of our informants told us of his harrowing experience in passing a night in his car on a slippery grade of the so-called Pacific Highway in Oregon until daylight and a cessation of the shower made it possible to proceed. He completed his drive to Portland but shipped his car back to San Francisco by steamer—no one but a fool, he said, would wish to drive both ways over such a road. And yet, when we called on the well-informed Automobile Association in San Francisco, we were assured that the Pacific Highway was the standard route to Portland and when we proposed to proceed north from Lake Tahoe on the eastern side of the Sierras through Central Oregon to The Dalles and to return through Eugene, Grants Pass, Crescent City, and Eureka, we were regarded as being afflicted with a mild species of dementia. We were assured that while it might be possible to make the round with a good car, it was certainly not worth while; we would find rough, stony roads and endless steep grades, and the trip would try any machine and driver to the limit—all of which we found to be verily true save that we can never agree that it wasn’t worth while—a mere matter of opinion, after all. A few extracts from our road-book covering some of the route seemed to prove that the auto people knew what they were talking about. We found such cheerful information as “Roads poor; many sharp curves and heavy grades up to thirty per cent” and again, “Roads mountainous, heavy grades, sharp curves.” Of the hills about Eureka we were cautioned, “Roads poor, heavy grades up to thirty per cent; sharp curves; use care,” and I might quote similar data concerning our prospective route ad infinitum—but we found that really the worst parts of the road were not charted at all, for the book did not cover our proposed tour in Oregon.
