Old Stagecoach Road | San Luis Obispo, California [Off The Beaten Track Episode 2] 

We take the Power Wagon and explore the Old Stagecoach Road just north of San Luis Obispo!
Interactive 3D map of this track and GPX download: four.wheel.travel/old-stageco...
All tracks in this series: four.wheel.travel/off-the-bea...
In the second episode of our "Off The Beaten Track" series, we explore the Old Stagecoach Road on the Cuesta Grade, north of California's San Luis Obispo.
This single-lane dirt track is actually the second of four known versions in the recent history of this route up the Cuesta Grade - Cuesta incidentally means "slope" or "grade", so taking the name literally this is the Grade Grade!
The first version of this road was built by the Franciscan Padres who founded the mission of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in 1772. The Franciscans were keen to connect the mission at San Luis Obispo with missions to the north, including Mission San Antonio de Padua at Jolon, founded one year previously in 1771 and 70 miles to the north, and eventually to Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo, the mission at Carmel founded in 1770, some 140 miles to the north.
The remains of that first track are still visible in the valley between the Old Stage Coach Rd and the current day US 101 freeway but are behind locked gates and inaccessible to vehicles today.
The Old Stagecoach Road itself was built around 1876, following the Gold Rush of 1849. Business was booming in the state of California, and this created demand for transportation, which stagecoach companies sprang up to meet. Stagecoaches would initially travel down the old Padre Trail, which was so steep, passengers were instructed to dismount from the coaches in case something untoward occurred.
The city of San Luis Obispo was growing, and there needed to be a better route into and out of the town from the north. In 1876, Chinese crews were hired to the blasting and digging needed to put in a new, improved route.
This road was less steep than the Padre's Trail, but still relatively steep, and after the turn of the century, with the introduction of the motor vehicle, the Old Stage Coach road was considered too narrow and too steep for two-way motorized traffic. So it was that by 1923 a new wider route had been built up the Cuesta Canyon, 24 feet wide with a concrete surface. In 1926 this new road was named US Route 101. Horse-drawn traffic still used the Old Stage Coach Road.
The remains of the first version of the 101 are still clearly visible, and even accessible for little ways at the bottom of the grade where it joins the Old Stagecoach Road.
The current US 101 can be dated back to the late '30s when the existing route was straightened and widened, a trend that has continued to date, with the modern-day 6-lane freeway that runs maybe a third to a half a mile away from the Old Stagecoach Road route.
We like the pace of this old trail, vs the admittedly more efficient but occasionally hair-raising (if you allow your vehicle to gain a little too much momentum on the downward side) US 101 freeway.
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Music and Sound effects: www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
Music used under license from Epidemic Sound (epidemicsound.com) with additional music arranged and performed by Steve Wetherill.
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