A long day: Plank Road, Mexican border fence, Imperial Sand Dunes, desert flora, Quartzsite (again), a blimp and a bridge

One of the things we read about in the area that sounded interesting was the Plank Road. Here’s the story from the information sign in the area:

The story of the Plank Road began with the era of automobile transportation and a spirit of competition between the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles. San Diego was determined to become the hub of the Southern California road network. Civic and business leaders recognized the benefits of establishing roads to link their communities and promote commerce. Businessman and road builder “Colonel” Ed Fletcher, a key promoter for San Diego, sponsored a race from Southern California to Phoenix, Arizona. The Examiner, a Los Angeles newspaper, issued a personal challenge to Fletcher for the race.

The race took place during October 1912. Fletcher completed the race from San Diego to Phoenix in 19 ½ hours. He beat the Examiner’s reporter, who had been given a 24-hour head start and was racing from Los Angeles to Phoenix, by 10 hours! Fletcher managed to have his car pulled across the Imperial Sand Dunes, before there was an established road, by a team of horses. He also got his car across the Colorado River in Yuma on a railroad bridge, winning the race. The approval to build the Plank Road through the Dunes was decided with support from Imperial County Supervisor, Ed Boyd, the local newspapers, and local communities. Also a factor in the decision was the recent state and Federal Government decision to build a bridge over the Colorado River in Yuma. With great fanfare, the first planks for a 2-track road were installed on February 14, 1915. Traffic and maintenance quickly wore the road. A second plank road, consisting of continuous 8-foot planks, was built in 1916. The second plank road remained in use until 1928 when a 20-foot wide, asphalt-like concrete road was constructed by the State Highway Commission.
<<< end of extracted information from the sign

This reminded me of the single-track roads that we used in Scotland many years ago. Like the roads in Scotland, the Plank Road had “passing” places at regular intervals. Unlike Scotland, on the Plank Road there were evidently frequent traffic jams due to people being unwilling to yield at the passing place and therefore all the traffic getting backed up!

The passing places were marked with a tire on a post like this. The roadway to the right was a recently made reconstruction of the original. Going up the dune is the original road.

Another view of the road up the dune.

There were two versions of the road there - I think this may have been the second iteration.

This was the "old" version of the reconstructed piece in the first picture.

For an idea of scale - that's Dwayne at the bottom of the old road.

Two dune buggies came up as we were preparing to leave - one with Texas flags and one with a Canadian flag.

 http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/elcentro/arch_cult/plankrd.html

Near the plank road, we could see the fence between US and Mexico

A zoomed in view

This is looking back east towards the Imperial Sand Dunes. I-8 is the road over to the left - you can see a tractor trailer there to get an idea of scale.

An interesting thing that I read was that these sand dunes were used in the sand scenes in the filming of the “Return of the Jedi” Star Wars film.

One thing that is fascinating to me in this area is that the irrigation canal goes through this barren desert. It is just so odd looking!

We stopped at the Buttercup Ranger station - it had this information plaque.

Additional information plaque

Post is too big -- splitting into two!