Abandoned Section of the Canyon Trail, near Gold Mine Creek

Finally figured out the this puzzling section of the Canyon Trail just below Gold Mine Creek in the Montebello Open Space Preserve.

I've ridden by this part of the Canyon Trail countless times and always wondered why it's different than the rest of the trail. This is located just down from mile post 2.5.

The Canyon Trail shows up down to this location on the 1961 USGS historical topo map, marked as a "Jeep Trail". On that map, it ends right at this point, where it turns into a somewhat modern multi-use trail for about 1/4 mile. Then it turns back into an old single lane dirt road all the way down to where it crosses Stevens Creek at the Lower Table Mountain trail.

It seems that right here, the old road washed out some time ago, likely before the 1961 topo map was surveyed. Since the ranches in this area seemed to have stopped active operations around that time, whoever built this road probably didn't feel the need to repair it after it washed out.

When the Open Space District took over in the 1970s, they likely wanted to connect the 2 sections of the Canyon Trail back up to access the lower half of the canyon. So a multi-use trail was built around the washed out section of the old road. This may have been around 1990 or earlier as there was some trail construction below here around that time:

An accurate hill shade map proved to be invaluable in locating the old road, especially at the lower end. Since there's no cell coverage in the canyon, having an off-line version of that map is essential.
USGS National Map Viewer w/ Hill Shade:
https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

About the USGS HTMC:
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past

View/download maps on the TopoView site:
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/

Montebello Open Space history page:
https://www.openspace.org/preserves/monte-bello#history

More to come...
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