"Water Level Route"
US 30
July 16, 2020
For now, I am really going to focus on formatting the "Later Routes" section of the website and not spending hours and hours digging for missing photos. Those will be added as I work through my photo archive files after finishing the site repair.
Glancing through this quickly, there needs to be a lot more organization and indexing of pages that already exist along the course of the CRH. That will happen over time, it is not something I want to do right now as a part of this repair job. Especially in areas where it all becomes a tangled mess! Boardman, I am glaring at you!
Michael C. Taylor, Road of Difficulties: Building the Lower Columbia River Highway
Almost from the highway's beginning, voices from Astoria to The Dalles were raised in complaint about conditions along the route, about slides, detours, damage, and traffic. Through the decades, demands for a wider, straighter, and faster highway grew louder as more vehicles were registered.
Residents of Hood River and The Dalles petitioned for a water-grade route to replace the upper highway [HCRH] – a road that would run along the edge of the Columbia River rather than along its slopes – and were taken to task by engineer Samuel Lancaster, who called trucks "a menace" and successfully sough to restrict the hours that they could travel on "his" road.
Yet the end of the old highway was in sight, and it was a matter of time before significant pieces of both the upper [HCRH] and lower highways were discarded obliterated, or replaced altogether.
Taylor 83
Wikipedia: U.S. Route 30 in Oregon
US 30 runs mostly along I-84 in Oregon east of Portland, diverting to short segments of the old surface route to act as a business route or scenic route for I-84:
Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 1 mile (2 km) through Cascade Locks (also designated the Cascade Locks Highway)
Mount Hood Highway No. 26 3 miles (4 km) through Hood River
Historic Columbia River Highway No. 100 and Mosier-The Dalles Highway No. 292 20 miles (32 km) from Mosier to The Dalles
Pendleton Highway No. 67 7 miles (11 km) through Pendleton
La Grande-Baker Highway No. 66 5 miles (9 km) through La Grande
La Grande-Baker Highway No. 66, 22 miles (36 km) from North Powder to Baker City
Huntington Highway No. 449 8 miles (13 km) through Huntington
Ontario Spur of the Olds Ferry-Ontario Highway No. 455, 1 mile (1 km) from Ontario to the Idaho state line
The sections concurrent with I-84 are part of the Columbia River Highway No. 2 west of U.S. Route 730 at Boardman and part of the Old Oregon Trail No. 6 east of U.S. Route 730.
There is also a U.S. Route 30 Business signed in the Ontario area. This is part of the Olds Ferry-Ontario Highway No. 455.
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_30_in_Oregon