Highway 395: A Path of History and Heartache on 557 Miles History California California’s Beaty

[00:00:00]Highway 395 runs 557 [music] miles through the eastern edge of California from the Mojave to the Oregon border. Mile [music] for mile, it is the most historically loaded highway in America. It climbs into the Owens Valley, the Sierra Nevada rising to [music] over 14,000 ft on one side, the White Mountains on the other. Mount Whitney, the highest peak [music] in the continental United States, visible right from the road. But here is where the beauty gets complicated. The Owens [music] Valley was once a thriving agricultural region. Ranches, farms, a functioning economy. Then Los Angeles came for the water. [music] In 1913, the Los Angeles Aqueduct drained the Owens River south to feed a city 230 miles away. The farms dried up. Owens Lake, once large enough to support steamboats, became a toxic dust bowl. Highway 395 runs right alongside that aqueduct for miles. You can see it from the road. The pipe that drained a valley to build a city. Then you reach Manzanar, right there on Highway 395. In 1942, it was a prison. Over 10,000 [music] Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated here, surrounded by barbed wire, in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, because of what they looked like. The cemetery monument still reads Soul Consoling Tower in Japanese characters, placed there by the prisoners themselves. Keep driving north and you reach Bodie, a gold rush boom town that once held 10,000 people. By 1942, completely abandoned. One of the greatest ghost towns in the American West, sitting just off 395 [music] like a warning about what happens when the money runs out. Then Mono Lake, >> [music] >> over a million years old. Los Angeles tried to drain this, too. The lake dropped 45 ft. It took a 16-year legal battle, finally won in 1994, to stop them. The same highway, the same water [music] story playing out again 100 miles north. If you have driven 395, you already know. [music] There is no road like it anywhere on Earth. What is your favorite stretch of 395? Drop your mile marker in the comments. Follow California [music] history for the water wars, ghost towns, and highway stories that make California the most complex state in America.