Arizona Humor

ROADSIDE REST Searing Heat and Blowing Sand Made Traveling the Old Plank Road a Life-threatening Adventure

In the American Southwest this month, it will seem as though half the nation's citizens are motoring westward through the region, and the other half, eastward.

August, and vacationing America is on the move. By and large, the nomads will be wheeling along divided multilane freeways and broad, smooth offshoots, encapsulated in quiet, safe, comfortable air-conditioned bubbles. Children and young adults within those cool, serene compartments may be forgiven for assuming that this was the way it always was.

Nowadays traffic zips unhindered along Interstate 8 through the rolling mounds of grit. Aside from the surrealistic scenery of rippled sand, stark utility poles, and sparse, tenacious vegetation, the highway is similar to rural freeways elsewhere. But within the memory of the elderly, crossing “The Little American Sahara” between Yuma, Arizona, and Holtville, California, was considered a daunting adventure. The Old Plank Road of the early 1900s was the shortcut of choice, but it was a rough way to go.

The geographical obstacle was the Algodones Dunes, also known as the White Sand Hills. Those heaved-up remnant beaches of a long-vanished sea extend northward from Mexico into California for 50 miles.

Desert heat was not always the most fearsome foe. A correspondent for The Kansas City Star described how it was to ride a train across the rails skirting the northern edge of the dunes: “All at once our vision through the car windows was obstructed by what appeared to be the leaping into the air of the sand banks and ridges through which we were passing.

“At first we thought nothing of it, but as the wind increased in intensity the car rocked, sand hit the windows with a crackling sound, and at times we feared the train would be blown from the tracks. The conductor and brakeman came charging into the car and began hurriedly closing the overhead transoms and seeing that all windows were tightly closed. Then they pulled their guns and warned the passengers not to open the doors or windows, stating they would shoot anyone who attempted to do so.

“By this time the fury of the storm had increased to such an extent that we were traveling through a perfect inferno of swirling dust and sand. In spite of the closed doors, windows and all openings, the fine sand soon sifted into the car and filled it with a yellow fog.” When horseless carriages wandered into the Southwest, they encountered the brutal gauntlet of Mammoth Wash with its boulders, soft bottoms, and flash floods. Area service stations routinely sold shovels along with gasoline. As historian Robert Sperry has written, “The eight or ten miles along the railroad and the north end of the sand hills, were very difficult An enterprising teamster camped at the start of this difficult section with a team of mules, and was ready, for a fee, to pull unfortunate travelers across the sand ridges.” By 1916 boosters of San Diego and Imperial counties initiated a daring project. Could the ever-shifting dunes be conquered with a path of flexible, portable wooden sections? Worth a try. Financed by public subscription, 37 boxcars of redwood planks arrived at the Ogilby railhead. The lumber was freighted by wagon to the eastern side of the dunes. There crews of workers, bolstered by a jail chain gang, nailed pieces of two board tracks each 25 inches wide onto crossties. In April the sixmile-long road, sweat-stained and bristling with a million splinters, was opened. Soon afterward sections were strengthened with steel straps.

In theory the Old Plank Road was a stroke of genius. When gales buried road pieces, they could be lifted up, reset on grade, and rejoined. Although the eight-foot-wide path provided only one lane, planked turnouts on all the heights allowed motorists to wait for right-of-way. Worn-out rubber tires atop poles marked the turnouts.

But the design was often defeated by technical failure, human obstinance, and Mother Nature. Planks warped. Narrow tires stuck in cracks. Drivers veered into sand. Nasty disputes arose over which vehicles were supposed to go, wait, or back up. People died when they were caught in storms. Others were lucky merely to have all the paint sandblasted from their cars. “Old Shaky” was one nickname for the road, and another, “Terror Firma.” Primitive though it was, the Old Plank Road served for 10 years. Then in 1924, miraculously, a water well rated at 500 gallons per minute was struck in Open Valley in the middle of the dunes. The well made economically feasible a watercompacted sand base to support a concrete-asphaltum coating. At last the dunes were defeated with a modern road in 1926.

Several citizen movements in recent decades have rescued stretches of plank paving from souvenir hunters and campfires. But relatively few of today's freeway hurriers pause to contemplate the Old Plank Road. Mostly they whip through the dunes in 10 minutes, and not one car in a thousand carries a shovel.