Shoemaker Canyon's tunnels to nowhere, a remnant of the atomic threat

@ElentirENG ES 2·13·2024 · 23:41 0

In the interior of California, east of the Angeles National Forest, there is a mountainous area known as Shoemaker Canyon.

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This canyon is traversed by a 7-kilometer dirt road, which begins at the East Fork Road and runs parallel to the San Gabriel River, a road known as Shoemaker Canyon Road. Curiously, on that road there are two large abandoned tunnels, large enough to house trucks. The most curious thing is that that road leads nowhere: it ends in the middle of the mountains, which is why it is known as the Road to Nowhere. What's the point of making two large tunnels for a dirt road that ends abruptly in a mountain?

The history of that curious path began in 1956. During the Cold War there was fear that Los Angeles would suffer a nuclear attack, being one of the largest cities in the United States. To improve the chances of evacuating the city, it was decided to build a highway through the San Gabriel Mountains, which would avoid traffic jams on the existing roads, which is why this road is also known as "Armageddon Highway."

Inmates were used to build the road and tunnels, which explains another of the names that give rise to this road: "Convict Road". Due to budget cuts, the project was canceled in 1969 and construction of the highway came to an abrupt halt. Today, the road and tunnels are abandoned, but are still used by mountaineers and cyclists. Two weeks ago, the channel Boonies published an interesting video walking that path and its two tunnels:

You can see some screenshots of this interesting video here. Below these lines we have an aerial view of the Shoemaker Canyon trail:

This is the first tunnel on the road. It bears the date "1961", indicating the year of its construction.

The section of the road that separates both tunnels. The road that leaves the first tunnel turns abruptly to the north. There was a bridge that avoided having to go around that ravine, but some floods destroyed it.

Here we see the second tunnel. It bears the date of 1965, but it seems that its construction was not completed.