A cadre of local car buffs and community leaders has turned a serpentine ribbon of asphalt into living history.

Work to reclaim the legacy of Highway 395 – a rambling drive that connects Inland communities from Mexico to Canada – has gained momentum as one key individual after another signed on. As it meets key goals, the mushrooming, multi-state effort is preserving the past and giving future generations a glimpse at the fledgling days of automotive travel.

"It has become much bigger than I had originally strategized or thought possible," said Tom Casey, who spearheaded the historic designation project in conjunction with his Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce role. "Suddenly it began expanding. Everybody wanted a part of it. This is the project everyone liked."

As a member of the Chamber’s Executive Committee, Casey grappled with the challenge of how to lure drivers off hectic Interstate 15 into the bucolic village that is perhaps best known for its hillside plant nurseries and avocado groves.

Casey found the answer in Highway 395, which knitted together a string of far- flung communities before freeways sliced, diced or, in Fallbrook’s case, skirted them completely. The trick was, Casey concluded, to detour drivers back into an era when it took a day to cover what takes mere hours to travel today.

"A lot of people drive the interstate and have no idea where Fallbrook is," Casey mused in an interview.

Now, as a result of legislation and a growing string of roadside markers, many off-the-beaten-path cities, communities and landmarks that line the historic highway are being rediscovered. It may, some participants hope, eventually win the recognition that has been showered on Route 66 in recent years.

In order to create a snapshot of the highway’s history, Casey, 57, recently gathered three longtime observers of the route to etch their memories onto a video archive.

Highway came of age with region

Highway 395, which was commonly known as California’s Inland Route, was created when wind-swept dirt and gravel roads from San Diego to the Cajon Pass and other points north were cobbled together and mapped.

The route was tagged with a series of local names and number designations over the years as it was paved and improved. It was designated Highway 395 in 1939 after federal legislation was passed.

About that time, it became known as the "Three Flags Highway" because it linked three countries. With Mexico and Canada serving as its bookends, the route crossed through California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

At that time it could take from dawn until dusk to drive the winding highway from San Diego to Pomona.

On that drive, motorists perched precariously above narrow tires would begin on what is now Highway 163 in San Diego and slowly thread their way through the then-tiny towns of Poway, Escondido, Vista, Fallbrook, Rainbow, Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Perris, Val Verde, Alessandro, Riverside and Ontario.

A few years later, as America prepared to enter World War II, the military began to lobby for funds to improve the highway and better link San Diego’s Navy base with a weapons depot west of Fallbrook and March Field in what would eventually become Moreno Valley.

State officials allocated $1.4 million and the military importance of that segment of the route caused it to be nicknamed the "Cannonball Highway."

The route’s importance grew as northern segments were added and it skirted the Eastern Sierra and stretched to the Canadian border.

But segments – including many throughout Riverside and San Diego counties – began to disappear and fade into distant memory when Interstates 15 and 215 were built from the 1960s through the 1980s. Those freeways split Escondido, Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore and Perris as they skirted San Marcos, Fallbrook, Rainbow, Moreno Valley and Riverside.

Construction of those freeways also fueled massive development booms that changed the faces, and fates, of all those communities.

The remaining marked segment of the original highway continues to run from Hesperia in San Bernardino County along the eastern Sierra Nevada and up to Canada.

Sections of the southern segment of Highway 395 have lingered for history buffs to retrace.

Beginning on Highway 163 in San Diego, adventurous drivers can wind their way up Pomerado Road in Poway, Mission Road in Fallbrook, Old Town Front Street in Temecula, Palomar Street in Wildomar and Highway 74 between Lake Elsinore and Perris.

Some physical remnants of the former route, including a pair of aging concrete bridges in Bonsall and Fallbrook, still stand. Other pieces of the past, including decaying concrete footings and wooden posts near Jefferson Avenue in Temecula, were obliterated by development in recent years.

One of the first regional efforts to revive the highway’s memory came in February 2002, when Jeffrey Harmon, a local historian and museum docent, helped organize a month-long exhibit.

That exhibit at the Temecula Valley Museum was dubbed "Take a ride on the 395." The exhibit culminated more than a year spent researching the highway and borrowing maps, photographs, personal accounts and other materials.

The 36 photos, five maps and other items that made up the exhibit gave glimpses of life along various stages of the highway’s history.

A 1956 receipt from the former Knott’s Garage, which lined the highway in Old Town Advertisement
Temecula, shows that a farmer was charged $43.48 to have the brakes and an axle seal replaced and a trailer hitch installed on his tractor.

That historic blacksmith shop-turned-garage, which was built about 1910, was severely damaged when a flood inundated Old Town Temecula in 1993. The former garage was razed about seven years later and a commercial building was constructed in its place.

A photograph taken inside the Silver Springs Cafe in Fallbrook in the 1940s showed that a bacon-and-egg breakfast cost 20 cents and a roast beef sandwich cost 35 cents.

The three men that Casey gathered for the video archive had fond memories of those landmarks and more. During the gathering, held at the Fallbrook workshop of one of the men, Casey recalled the steps he had taken over the past few years to win a historic designation for their beloved highway.

Casey, who founded and ran medical services and defense industry firms, had earned his political stripes by serving as a co-chairman of San Diego fundraising efforts to re-elect Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994.

Keying off this political know-how, Casey searched for the right sponsor for legislation to designate Highway 395 as a historic route. For that, he turned to state Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries, R-Lake Elsinore, whose father has achieved legendary status in custom vehicle design and fabrication circles.

Dean Jeffries used the customizing and pin striping skills he learned while serving in the military in Germany to catapult into the Hollywood film industry. Actor James Dean was one of Jeffries’s early customers, and from there he moved onto the Indianapolis 500 and into the shops of famous race car designers.

Jeffries went on to design the Black Beauty car from "The Green Hornet" television series, the Monkeemobile for the TV musical combo and vehicles featured in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and the James Bond thriller "Diamonds Are Forever."

But Casey knew it would be difficult to win approval of legislation if a bill required the allocation of state funds. Thus, Casey and Jeffries left it up to counties, cities and communities to produce and place road signs along the historic route.

A resolution shepherded by Jeffries was approved in June and signs soon began popping up in San Diego, Riverside and other counties along the way.

"During these tough economic times, it’s nice to be able to look back to a simpler time in California and preserve a little bit of our motoring history," Jeffries said in a press release at the time.

As Casey watches route signs proliferate elsewhere, he is angling for funds to post signs at the I-15 Mission Road exit to show where the highway connected Bonsall, Fallbrook, Rainbow and Temecula.

Those four communities were the main stomping grounds for the trio that Casey recently united.

Casey gathered three men – Dode Martin and Gene and Jim Knott, to record a sense of the highway’s storied past. The highway was a key player throughout their collective 217 years.

Martin – an 83-year-old, lifelong Fallbrook resident – has achieved legendary status as a drag racer and car frame producer. He recalls each twist and turn on the original road and how hot rods once hugged the corners and raced the clock in lightly-traveled segments of the highway.

The Knott brothers spent much of their time growing up at their grandparent’s repair shop in Old Town Temecula. Gene, 66, lives in Murrieta, not far from the highway’s path through that that fast-growing city. Jim, 68, lives near Bishop, which today remains bisected by Highway 395.

During their recent meeting, the trio re-established their long-ago ties to each other and recalled many of the landmarks that once or still dot local segments of the highway. Some landmarks – including granite outcroppings, gas stations, snack shops, road houses and honky-tonks – served as vital way stations along the way.

By grinding one memory against another, they slowly pulled images of such places as Shady Grove, Heller’s Bend and Poway Grade out of the past. They recalled empty mesas, vast stretches of sagebrush and camps of workers who built bridges spanning rivers and creeks before moving onto their next job site.

"There sure are a lot of memories of the old road," Martin, who has been inducted into the Hot Rod Automotive Hall of Fame, mused at one point. He recalled that Bonsall’s main landmark once consisted of a Texaco station, a single pay phone and an outhouse.

"That’s some of the old history of the old route that went through our town," Martin noted.

They recounted convoys of wartime troops shuttling between military bases and how – unlike today – civilians did not dare squeeze in among the slow-moving vehicles. Those convoys frequently shut down Fallbrook, Rainbow, Temecula and other communities as they passed through, the men recalled.

They reminisced about how Highway 395 was a vital link for Vail Ranch and other agricultural outposts to ship cattle, carrots and other crops to San Diego, Los Angeles and other key markets.

They also recalled how – unlike today – Fallbrook, Rainbow and Temecula seemed worlds apart from each other. They marveled how fast the area has grown in just a few decades and how different life has become today.

"It’s amazing the transformation that has taken place," Gene Knott said.

1. Jeffery G. Harmon says :

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2. D. Harvey says :

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