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The Ridge Route was the popular name given to an early 20th-century road in the United States. The Ridge Route was California's first highway, linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley; it was particularly used to travel from the city of Los Angeles to Bakersfield. Its official name was the Castaic-Tejon Route. In 1895, the State Bureau of Highways was created by Governor James H. Budd who appointed three highway commissioners: R.C. Irvine of Sacramento, Marsden Manson of San Francisco and L. Maude of Riverside. Though a great deal of the route had been daylighted (widened) and paved in asphalt by the mid-1920s, much of the 1919 concrete pavement remains intact. In some areas, Model T tire tracks can still be seen, left decades ago in the still-soft concrete. (Full article...)