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Old Posted Jan 1, 2011, 8:41 PM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: South Pasadena, California
Posts: 6,846
Happy New Year everyone!

Los Angeles Past, thank you very much for your posts on the Ramona Parkway!

When I first read about it a few years ago on that Topics and Tales link from the LADOT (I posted the link a while back, I don't remember which page of the thread), I became a little curious/obsessed with the Ramona Parkway, because of its history, its status as a sort of "proto-freeway," which is now of course a part of the federal Interstate Highway System as I-10 (such a clinical, unromantic name for a system of highways). I was very surprised to learn that this bridge (which of course I stood on when I took a picture of the San Bernardino Fwy/Santa Ana Fwy merge looking towards downtown LA):


(From This Was Pacific Electric, written and directed by Thom Eberhardt. Sky City Productions, Inc.: www.skycityproductions.com)

was built in 1910 (BTW Gaylord, I love this image). It actually predates any roadway and freeway that went/goes beneath it. I thought it was originally built to go over the railroad tracks; I never thought that maybe it was built to go over a wash or arroyo. Your posts show that it was. It made me look it up, and apparently it was built to go over a dry wash called the Arroyo de Los Posos.

In September I got a new job in Rosemead, which is 8 miles from where I live. I use the San Bernardino Freeway for my commute. Metrolink tracks and trains run down the center of the stretch of that freeway I drive to and from work. I used to find it odd that there would be railroad tracks down the center of that freeway, but I've come to realize that that railway predates the freeway.

Here's a shot of the railroad tracks down the center of the San Bernardino Freeway in 1958, courtesy of the USC Archive. It was captioned as a train derailment.


The name "Ramona" exists vestigially as Ramona Blvd. along some stretches of street that parallel the 10 Fwy/San Bernardino Fwy in that area.
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