MOTOR RAMBLES

Motor car advertisement, circa 1915-1920 - Courtesy of Santa Cruz County Historic Photograph Collection, Special Collections, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Our first inquiries were for the road to this famous forest [Big Trees Grove], and we learned it was a few miles north of the town. We followed the river canyon almost due north over a shelflike road cut in the hill sides some distance above the stream. It commands a beautiful view of the wooded valley, which we might have enjoyed more had we not met numerous logging-wagons on the narrow way. The drivers, —stolid-looking Portuguese—frequently crowded us dangerously near the precipice along the road; in one instance, according to the nervous ladies in the rear seat, we escaped disaster by a hair's breadth. According to the law in California, a motorist meeting a horsedrawn vehicle on a mountain road must take the outside, even though contrary to the regular rule. The theory is that the people in the car are safer than those behind a skittish horse, though in instances such as I have just mentioned the motorist faces decidedly the greater danger. We climbed a gradual though easy grade for six or seven miles and turned sharply to the left down a steep, winding trail to the river bank."

 

"We left the car here and crossed by a high, frail looking suspension footbridge which swayed and quivered in a most alarming manner, though it probably was safe enough. The trees are at the bottom of the canyon in a deep dell shut in by towering hills on either side … They are indeed wonderful and stately, their tall, tapering shafts rising in symmetrical beauty and grace like the vast columns of some mighty edifice. Millenniums have passed over some of them and all our standards of comparison with other living things fail us. The words of William Watson on an ancient yew recur to us as we gaze on these Titans of the western world: 'What years are thine not mine to guess; The stars look youthful, thou being by,' —but our musings were cut short when we noted that the shadows were deepening in the vale. We had some miles of mountain road to traverse if we were to spend the night at San Jose and we retraced our way to Santa Cruz as fast as seemed prudent over such a road."

Source: On Sunset Highways – A Book of Motor Rambles in California, by Thos. D. Murphy, 1915.