Signs recall days when old Highway 99 was a busy route in Mountain Gate

Two generations of Mountain Gate residents are bringing history alive.

Darion Fairburn, 23, and his newfound friend, 73-year-old Dave Selby, are bringing attention to the days when historic U.S. Route 99 wound through the town about 12 miles north of Redding.

Their efforts will lead to a ceremony at 10 a.m. Monday when a commemorative sign will be unveiled at Fawndale Road and Wonderland Boulevard at the spot where motorists drive on the former highway.

Signs also will go up at two other stretches of old U.S. Route 99 in town.

"The old 99 is an important part of Mountain Gate," Shasta County Public Works Director Pat Minturn said. "It really gave rise to Mountain Gate so the folks are really proud of the road up there," he said.

More: Historical Dobrowsky house demolished to make way for courthouse

The morning ceremony will take place not far from where a Texaco station used to attract drivers who wanted a full-service fill-up and stroll over to see a pen with of about eight buffalo.

The Texaco was one of five gas stations in town at the time and a photo of its sign invited passers-by to "See the live buffalo."

Selby recalls visiting his grandparents' property as a youth in the late 1950s and feeding apples to the nearby bison in a fenced-off field.

"They'd come right up to the fence to you. You'd need to watch out for the bull because if he was mad, he'd walk right through the fence," he said.

Fairburn said he got the idea for his Highway 99 sign project about two years ago when he was a California Conservation Corps worker working on habitat restoration along Route 99 near Sacramento.

"That got me wondering about its history. So I looked and discovered it was the I-5 of the 20th century and it also ran through Mountain Gate until 1965," Fairburn said.

The California Department of Transportation gave him old maps that he could study. He found out the Mountain Gate sections — Holiday Road and Wonderland Boulevard — were built by the state highway department in April 1917 as the Pacific Highway then in 1932 as U.S. Route 99.

Fairburn noted, I-5 north of Redding got its Cascade Wonderland Highway moniker from those two frontage roads.

Selby said Fairburn approached him as president of the Mountain Gate Auxiliary Board and asked if the community group would buy the road signs, and the members pitched in nearly $500. The Mountain Gate Community Services District also had a role with the Shasta County Board of Supervisors approving the signs.

"So much of our history is getting torn down that people don't remember it anymore," Selby said.

By 1964, the construction of I-5 had wiped out the old alignment of U.S. Route 99, but some recognizable stretches still remain on Wonderland Boulevard and Holiday Road such as narrow concrete pavement, culverts and bridges, according to the Shasta County Public Works Department.

"You wonder why there's remnants out in the middle of nowhere," Minturn said.

That was evident as recent as 2008 during a drought when the level of Lake Shasta dropped to a 16-year low and exposed part of the old Pacific Highway and other short stretches and bridges of Highway 99.

Minturn explains local roads were cobbled together to form a highway system that included U.S. Route 99 to satisfy the growing number of car owners after the 1920s. In 1926, the U.S. Numbered Highway System was created with north-south highways given odd numbers and east-west routes getting even numbers, such as another famous interstate, Route 66.

More: Apple trees are a reminder of Whiskeytown's history

"It wasn't until Highway 99 came along that they made a good road to Oregon," Minturn said. "Pretty much I-5 follows the road along 99," he said.

In Shasta County, Highway 99 went from Red Bluff to roads we know today as old Main Street in Cottonwood, Rhonda Road in Anderson and Highway 273 between Anderson and Redding, where there's already a Historic Route 99 sign northbound just south of Buenaventura Boulevard.

The old state highway went through Redding's Market Street, headed north onto the Miracle Mile to reach what is now Twin View Boulevard where it meandered past such landmarks as Joe's Giant Orange Restaurant on Cascade Boulevard in Shasta Lake.

The route took drivers up Union School Road and Old Oregon Trail before hooking up with Wonderland Boulevard and Holiday Road and eventually using the Pit River Bridge and the Sacramento River canyon. The highway went past another landmark, the Mesquite Steakhouse, that's been abandoned for years and burned down earlier this month off Wonderland Boulevard.

Just as Highway 99 gave life to Mountain Gate, its abandonment in the shift to I-5 caused commerce there to dwindle.

"A lot of businesses went out of business. A few stuck around until 1968," Selby said.

Those businesses that closed included the Texaco near the Buffalo Ranch, a motel, restaurant and grocery store, he said.

One beloved placed that closed was Swanees, which advertised huge, 29-cent burgers. Selby remembers workers at nearby Calaveras Cement (now Lehigh Southwest Cement Co.) having lunch orders delivered with the burgers, fries, soda pop and big slices of cobbler.

"This was a little project I wanted to do for my community since I've lived there for half of my 23 years," Fairburn said. "It's my way of giving back."

Former portions of U.S. Route 99 in Mountain Gate: