Highways can be crowded, confusing, and boring. They can be icons and legendary. I recently traveled a highway that in a few hundred miles passes through a cross section of the history, geography, and culture of California, and I'm certain it will continue to be known, and either cursed or celebrated, by few people. State Highway 58 is that route.
Sunday, one of the last in March. I wander among wildflowers spread out across Antelope Valley. After spending the night in Lancaster, an outlier of Los Angeles County, I start driving north on State Highway 14 at 7:30 on a sunny Monday morning. The gas gauge shows the tank to be more than half full, but I decide to fill up at the first Chevron station I see. This turns out to be in Mojave, a god-forsaken wide spot in the road on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. The wind is so fierce the gas pump trembles.
As I struggle with the steering wheel on the lightly traveled four-lane freeway, I notice a huge wind farm climbing up the stark mountains off to the west. This must be what I spotted yesterday from a hill covered with orange poppies, a jarring note of industrialism shimmering in the far distance. After a few miles State 14 continues to the northeast to join US 395, my favorite route of all time, and I veer off on to 58 as it shoots westward from its beginning at the junction of Interstates 40 and 15 in Barstow, about 60 miles farther east.
At first, semis clog the lanes, but soon a computerized sign flashes orange, demanding all trucks stop and be weighed. After I pass the scales, traffic becomes noticeably thinner as the four-lane divided road snakes through the fearsome Tehachapi Mountains and around the backside of the Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm, one of the world's largest producers of wind-generated electricity. Huge white propellers climb up and down the steep slopes, whirling away. In the meantime, black clouds have moved in low over the black summits and headlights come on. The wind keeps up its ferocious blow.
The bare slopes begin to be thinly populated with trees, oaks and pines. Gray metal towers of a refinery or smelter glitter against the dark mountains, like a space station on a colonial planet in another part of the galaxy. The highway straightens as it nears the town of Tehachapi and I spot Home Depot at one exit and Holiday Inn Express at another as well as a sign for the National Chavez Center, which commemorates the work of labor leader César Chavez, but I find no hint of what many Californians think of when they hear the word Tehachapi—Tehachapi State Prison, a maximum security institution.
On the innocent surface of this town, ranchers raise alpacas and ostriches and the Pacific Crest Trail passes nearby, on its way from Mexico to Canada. A side road leads to the Tehachapi Loop, a section of railroad track that curves back on itself and is considered an outstanding engineering feat by railroad buffs. The chamber of commerce touts the area as blessed with delightful weather and as a perfect place to visit and reside in, but this morning the wind and gloom convince me to not even slow down.
The sky remains moody and menacing as I continue west, and soon I'm the only vehicle on the road. Since I don't want to drive through Bakersfield, I turn off 58 on to State Highway 223 in order to get to I-5. The sun appears and brightens up the hills, now a healthier color, actually green, and full of trees. Lupine, the darkest purpley-blue I've ever seen, and large stands of a bushy, cream-colored locoweed bloom by the roadside. Startling views open up as the asphalt twists along the edge of the mountains and I look down into the San Joaquin Valley, blurred by smog. Artist Wayne Thiebaud must have traveled this way and seen the vast, flat land, criss-crossed by straight lines of vineyard and orchard.
Suddenly, 223 swoops down into the flatland, cruising between vineyards on one side of the road and orchards on the other and gliding into Arvin. This small farming town in Kern County has the highest level of smog of any community in the United States. But it's not poor Arvin's fault. Caught between Bakersfield and Los Angeles and I-5, it hasn't got a chance. However, the wide fields manage to grow bumper crops of cotton, grain, carrots, potatoes, almonds, oranges, and grapes. The sleepy town might be in Mexico—on the main drag hardly a sign in English, Chevron was one of them.
The road skirts the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, an example of how California agriculture depends on and conserves scant water resources. The district captures rain in wet years and stores it underground to use in dry years. It also provides water to the metropolitan Los Angeles area. A bit west of town I cross over the California Aqueduct, a man-made, concrete river that collects water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the valleys of northern and central California and takes it to the parched southern part of the state. The story of water in California is an epic one, mostly of greed and plunder. I would love to tell you all about it here, but that is for another day.
West, ever west on 223, in a ruler-straight line past dairies, cattle feedlots, and bare fields, one with a huge new mansion sitting alone in the middle of it. Since getting off 58, I have seen only a few lumbering farm vehicles and dirty white pickup trucks. No one tail-gating me, no one driving 25 in a 55-mile zone. About three hours after leaving Lancaster, I arrive at I-5. It, too, is practically deserted. What a pleasure: few big rigs, and plenty of room between cars.
This freeway takes me across the California Aqueduct again before I use the exit at Buttonwillow to rejoin 58. Beyond the few hundred feet of gas stations at the exit, I find myself on a narrow two-lane road, one of the loneliest routes I will ever drive. My goal for the day is Carrizo Plain National Monument, where I hope to find its famed wildflowers. The sky has become gray again and threatening. The rolling landscape wears a spotty mantle of yellow, probably coreopsis. I see a sign—Seismic Crew Ahead—and eagerly look forward to meeting this group—actual people. But I see no one, no trucks, no equipment, only steel giants stalking toward the crowded L.A. basin—high-voltage electricity transmission lines.
The road quickly rises into serious hills, under which lie several large deposits of oil. The so-called "town" of McKittrick, population plus or minus 160, sits in the middle of the McKittrick Field. South of town is the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, the second-largest in the contiguous United States; to the northwest is the huge Cymric Field as well as South Belridge Oil Field; and east is the Elk Hills Field. Hardly any of this shows: a low-profile oil cleaning plant and a scattering of those grasshopperlike oil pumps. The area is also known for its
tar pits where the bones of Ice Age mammals have been found.
The pavement becomes narrower, windier, and steeper, and I encounter only three vehicles in the hour it takes to get to Carrizo Plain. Also, no houses or barns, few fences or side roads, no signs and no humans. The road climbs up precipitous hillsides that I can see coming and wish weren't there—no guard rails—and into a fog bank. Then, suddenly, sunlight bursts through the mist. A bright yellow nap covers the hills.
I turn off 58 on to Soda Lake Road and travel through California Valley, which is supposed to be a place, but I must have been misinformed. Finally, a sign: Carrizo Plain National Monument. I spend several hours here and see no more than half a dozen cars, all carrying wildflower enthusiasts—like me, small figures in a huge, flat plain painted with swaths of goldfields, tidy tips, coreopsis, a celebration of yellows. Accompanied by the songs of meadowlarks, we slow and stop, slow and stop, hop out with our cameras, walk a few yards into a field, try to shake the mud from our shoes. Purple filaree grows thickly along the verge and colonies of purple owl's clover nestle in among the goldfields. Wind whips constantly, making it hard to get a close-up photo that will not be fuzzy.
To the east crouches the Temblor Range, which I have just driven through. The San Andreas Fault runs at the base its western slope. Those photos you've seen of brown, eroded, lifeless-looking mountains with a deep gash slicing through them, the surface trace of the fault—they were taken over there, across those fields of yellow flowers.
Goodwin Education Center is closed, but the restrooms are unlocked—and spotless. Few people have stopped to use them since the last service call in October, as noted on the wall. In a tree in the parking area, I spot a hooded oriole among a flock of starlings.
Now it's time to set off for Santa Margarita, where, after 43 miles, 58 joins U.S. 101. These gentle mountains, the Santa Lucias of San Luis Obispo County, are much more welcoming and civilized than the Tehachapis and the Temblors. I pass small, prosperous-looking ranches, orchards, vineyards, contented cattle, and juicy green grass growing under stately valley oaks. Still, I have no one in front of me or behind me all the way. I meet a few cars headed east, tearing up the road, in a hurry to get . . . where?
After an hour, I curve onto the freeway and head north toward home, into a land of cars, gas stations, and fields of yellow mustard.
Temblor Range from Carrizo Plain
