good morning youtube so in this video we're going to look at the old 1895 part of stevens canyon
road so this is where the current single track and hiking trail goes up here and i think in this area
was also where the old road crossed the creek now this area here was heavily eroded in 2017
when we had the record rainfall this big tree used to be growing up here and the trail used
to go around here it was real easy ride up there and now it's a really steep bank here
the old road came up the south side of the creek and then crossed here over to the north side
yeah so let's take a look at the track that i recorded so this was in late september
of 2021 and i recorded this track from that first creek crossing in the previous photo and
then i went up to the creek crossing at the table mountain trail this is about the only place where
you could have a road cross the creek for quite a distance in this canyon in this area of the canyon
the sides of the canyon are really really steep and the road stayed up high on the south side of
the canyon to avoid all that steep terrain and i'll post a follow-up video where i hike down
to about here just to look at some of that canyon that you can't see from the road it's actually
pretty spectacular down here and then upstream from here the canyon also gets pretty steep again
so this is the modern open street map topo map view and i can bring in the old 1900 or 1895 map
the old road used to cross the creek and that's basically right here the offset here is probably
on the order of 600 feet then maybe 200 meters something like that and here you can see here's
the old road coming up the south side of the creek it forwards the creek here and then splits there's
a road that goes up to the ridge here and then the old canyon road continued up and it followed
the north side of the creek for a while and then right in here it crossed the creek and
then stayed on the south side of the creek all the way up until it ended so let's get rid of that map
like the previous hike i just took some photos as i walked up the creek so this here is just past
the water crossing this is on top of that washed out bank and the modern trail runs literally right
on the edge of this bluff and you can probably see the steel fence posts there my guess is that this
part of the canyon there's probably a pretty hard resistant rock layer down on the bottom
and that's why the canyon is sort of wide and flat here because there's this hard rock layer
and then just downstream from here the creek starts cutting through that layer
and it gets a lot steeper and more rugged so as a result there's probably a lot of
sediment that builds up on top of this hard rock layer and i imagine over the years this creek
jumps around from one side of the canyon to the other side through this flat area deposits
a lot of sediment and then cuts through it and then deposits sediment someplace else and then
cuts through that yeah so anyway on this track the left side is when i went up the
creek channel and the right side is when i came back down the single track trail so you
can see here how the creek has jumped all over the place and we'll see that as we go upstream
so the next photo up this was where the creek has jumped from this side of the canyon over to the
other side this is a california bay laurel tree it's almost like a bonsai tree you've got this
tree full-sized tree growing on top of this big boulder next to the creek and the roots are
wrapping around this rock really really neat looking tree and here the creek bed
looks like it's pretty old you know everything's fairly flat and no real sharp banks or anything
now the creek jumps across to the other side of the canyon here and you can see how this area
is just recently eroded here you can see the banks are really sharp and the creek is kind
of all over this area just washing away the soil and and then looking just the other way
this is where the modern single track trail goes and i'll show you a picture later on from up here
and i think that's also the old road bed is right there and then from that same point looking
downstream there was this big tree that fell down and just exploded into thousands of pieces
and then this is looking upstream from the end of that tree and here the
stream bed looks pretty established and there's this incredible oak tree here growing on the side
of the creek channel or actually growing over it that's daylight under there i've ridden up and
down this trail that's over here hundreds of times and i've never noticed this tree before because
when you're on the trail you're up here looking down and this bank is always in shadow and you're
looking down and you can't see daylight under there because you're looking into the bank but
walking up the creek channel at ground level you see that there's daylight under that tree and in
fact if you go upstream and look down here's the tree trunk there's more daylight under the tree
than there is tree there this is where the roots are so this tree full-size oak tree has been
growing there for a long time and just amazing and now every time i go by there i notice this tree
because i know that it's just hanging in the air you could sit under this tree if you wanted to
really amazing so just up a ways there here's the old road bed still on the north side of the creek
and at this point the single track trail has started climbing the canyon wall
here and then up a little farther i think this is still the road bed up here and then
here there's a big log jam there's a huge tree and then there's a huge rock out craw and in
between there there's just a huge pile of dead wood blocking the creek there someplace in here
i think is where the road crossed over to the south side of the creek like the old map shows
there's a road bed probably up in this area but it's really overgrown i think this is all poison
oak here and i wasn't too keen on going up there and looking but i imagine the road is over there
just around that bend here's the old road bed up here it's a little faint but it looked like a road
and if you go up a little bit farther this is why the creek makes a sharp bend there
the creek is flowing downstream hits this vertical wall and then there's this huge rock outcrop that
sticks back this way so the water must come down here flow up this bank and then it flows backwards
and boils around this outcrop and then makes basically a 90 degree turn right there but then
right at that point looking the other direction there's the old road going around the bend
a little bit farther this this must be a natural spring there was a lot of greenery around here
some big rocks and there was a pool there even though the creek was dry
there were fish and salamanders and all sorts of things hanging out here in the water so there were
pools of water even though the creek channel had dried up and then up a little bit from there there
was another sharp bend here and i think the road continues up under this fallen tree it's kind of
hard to see there but if you go on the other side it continues around the bend again nice nice road
bed there's the old cut and you go up a little farther this was looking downstream this is right
at the table mountain trail so there's a pretty good chunk of road here that you can walk down
and it's all in really good shape this is where i started the first walk and made that video a
little while ago at this point i just jumped back on to the the modern trail that was built in 1990
so i'm trying to figure out if i can get down to where i can see this water feature
down there so that's probably down in this area you can see the creek bed way down there
this is on the single track trail and i need to see if i can kind of side hill down this side
of the canyon and get over to where i can see into that big whirlpool that must be running down there
and then this is down at the bottom here where the single track trail is back on the old road bed so
i think the old road bed was right along here and that's where the current hiking trail goes up this
is the 1930 map and it shows the same thing but the quality of the map is a lot worse no they
don't have the 1940 they have a 1960 map here and unfortunately the 1960 map doesn't cover this area
but there is a 1980 map and you can see the 1980 map just shows the road
ending here and nothing up here that's been the case since the 1940 map off of the usgs
the 1980 map does show this road coming down from grizzly flat up here i think this dashed
line is that grizzly flat road it does show the canyon trail ending here the grizzly flat
road ending here and the canyon road ending here so there's a big gap here with nothing in 1980.
yeah it's really really interesting looking at these old maps and seeing
when do roads appear when do they disappear then you have to try to piece together what was the
chronology of these roads when did they show up when did they disappear which roads connected
to which other roads anyway that'll wrap up looking at the part of the old road that's still
accessible at least from the first water crossing at the end of the where the road exists today
and the third water crossing up here where the grizzly flat trail crosses the creek so we'll
have to wait and see if there's anything else but so yeah if you have any questions or if anybody
has any information on when this road was built or why it was built or if there was anything up here
if you have any links or references you know feel free to post those up in the comment section below
i haven't been able to find much of anything besides these old usgs maps and according to
what i can find it existed back in the day i don't know what it was used for there was just the one
little dwelling that was up here so i don't know if that road was built come up here and if so
why did they continue past that dwelling that's the real puzzling thing is i could see somebody
living up here and they build a road to get up to their place but why did they build a road pass
yeah there's still a mysteries around this road and as always thanks for watching