Cleaning up Historic US Route 80

Communities United States
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I recently noticed that OsmAnd is rendering a US 80 shield on this segment of I-8 in Imperial County, CA, which seemed odd, because at the time I was driving on some actual remnants of the old US 80 just a little to the north.

Some of the history of the area is that the development of the route through the mountains between Jacumba and Ocotillo was very difficult. We still have remnants of the old stage roads at Mountain Springs, and there’s the “Impossible Railroad” through Carrizo Gorge.

So, when I-8 was built, the eastbound lanes followed roughly the same path through the mountains as the old US Route 80. That’s “roughly” because I-8 did not follow exactly the same alignment as US Route 80. There are places where the old US Route 80 was demolished to build I-8. But there are still bits and pieces of the old US Route 80 paving alongside I-8.

There are some roads that are signposted as the Historic US Route 80. But I don’t think there are any such signs along I-8 in Imperial County. It seems like Evan Hewes Highway would have the better claim to the historical signage. And it doesn’t seem plausible that this on ramp really deserves to be tagged as Historic US Route 80.

I’d like to clean some of this up, but I could use some help. I know US Route 80 had a couple of different historical alignments through the area. If anyone has a reliable source for current roads that have been officially designated as Historic US Route 80, that would be very helpful.

And I’d be interested in opinions on how best to tag the abandoned but preserved segments of old US Route 80 concrete. I linked to one above that’s currently in use as a designated BLM route – that’s easy. What about the segments that were cut off by the I-8 construction and are no longer reachable?

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From my recollections on traveling US-80 in the days prior to I-8, Evan Hewes Highway looks like the alignment of the old road.

Regarding eastbound I-8 from Desert View, there are a myriad of visible old disconnected roadbeds and it would be very difficult to determine which sections were part of US-80 in what years. It looks like US-80 had several incarnations through that area over the years.

As far as sign posting, it has been a couple of years since I traveled that way, but I don’t recall seeing any “historic US-80” signage on I-8 in California.

For what it’s worth, further east the westbound I-8 through the sand dunes follows the old US-80 route more closely than the eastbound. That old rest area between the east and west bound lanes existed in US-80 days and as a child I burned my feet several times climbing a dune to the south of that rest area where the eastbound lanes now exist.

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That’s interesting to know about the rest area in the dunes. I took a look at some old USGS maps for the area, and I guess for a while, US 80 and I-8 shared that route through the dunes.

But I’m less interested in the historical alignments of the road through Imperial County. There are some good references from people who have traced the evolution of the road. But mapping that seems more like an exercise for OHM. We even have relations for the 1942, 1949, and 1955 alignments of US Route 80 that don’t really belong in OSM but would be good additions to OHM.

The question is really, which roads are currently designated as Historical US Route 80 in California? I took a look at ACR 123, but it’s not specific about which roads are eligible for the designation.

There’s some anecdotal evidence that while San Diego County put up some Historical US Route 80 signage, Imperial County generally did not. Except maybe at the bridges that cross the Colorado River into Yuma?

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ACR 123 does say that CalTrans is “to identify any remaining traversable segments of former U.S. Highway Route 80”. If we want the OSM Historic US-80 to match what CalTrans thinks can be signed as Historic US 80 then I guess we need to get the documentation from CalTrans. Otherwise it would be two parallel efforts which could easily diverge in places. Since OSM goes by ground truth, in this case posted signs, it could well be that we’ll end up with some portions of our Historic US-80 route relation being roads that were never actually part of US 80, just part of what CalTrans has decided qualifies for signs.

For example, that short bit of road BLM158 you mentioned in your first post would probably never qualify for a CalTrans sign while I can imagine I-8 just a few yards south of it might even though it is not on the exact alignment.

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I’m inclined to go with just what is signed – that’s the ground truth after all. I mean, Historic US Route 80 is just what has been designated, not all of the previous historical alignments that may or may not still exist.

Edit - I think this language is important: “remaining traversable segments of former U.S. Highway Route 80.” That means that only existing roads that are still in service and that were formerly part of US Route 80 are eligible for the historic designation. So, the left over bits and pieces that are not traversable cannot be designated as Historic US Route 80.

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But there’s this relation, Historic US 80 (CA), which looks like a wishlist of what could be signed as Historic US Route 80. I spot checked some street level imagery, and there certainly aren’t historical route signs along all these roads. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the signs along El Cajon Blvd and up in Guatay, so some of these roads do have signs.

Is this relation correct? And if so, do we keep all the corresponding ref/old_ref/unsigned_ref tags on the member ways?

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I was under the impression that the ref tag was superfluous for ways that were in a route relation but am certainly an expert on that.

I don’t recall ever seeing a “Historic US-nn” sign on any freeway anywhere in California or Arizona. My memory could be faulty or I could be unobservant. But if my recollection is correct, then pretty much all of I-8 should be excluded from the historic route. Certainly the west bound lanes up from the desert are miles from any right of way that US-80 ever had. I can see where someone might like to have a continuous set of ways in the route relation so maybe that is why I-8 is in it, but that does not seem to match the intent of the California law describing how the roads/ways should be determined.

I have horrible Internet where I am now but I took a look at the route relation to see when and why various ways were added to it. I was hoping to find a change set that referenced a CalTrans document. Lots of change sets with things like adding sidewalks, etc. so I have not looked through them all. Version 1 has only one way in it, a short bit of road just on the California side of the river on what I recall being the old US-80. That changeset was by @MatthewAndersonUS80 so maybe we should get him involved in this discussion.

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If I recall, I tried to contact MatthewAndersonUS80 previously and didn’t get a reply. It might be worth another try.

I was looking at some of the history of US Route 80 and I-8, and during the construction of I-8 from 1961 through 1974, I-8 and US Route 80 shared some road segments. If you look at USGS maps from that period, they have the old US 80 route and labels, the new I-8 route and labels, or sometimes the new I-8 route with both labels.

Some parts of US Route 80 may have been completely decommissioned when they were replaced by I-8. But it’s possible that the signage may have coexisted on portions of the I-8 route for a while. That would fit with what you remember about the Sand Hills Rest Area. But it’s also not clear that was the case consistently along the route.

TL;DR: Maybe I-8 through In-Ko-Pah Gorge briefly had US Route 80 signs?

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It’s sort of trivia, but I think that little bit of concrete that connects with BLM 158 was likely the pre-1926 alignment of US Route 80 that was washed out in a flash flood that came down Myer Creek / In-Ko-Pah Gorge. After the flood, the road was redirected further south to stay out of the wash, which put it closer to the current I-8 E alignment.

If you remember, Tropical Storm Kay (2022) caused significant damage to the SD&AE railway crossing that same section of Myer Creek. That type of flooding would absolutely have taken out a concrete road through the wash.

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When the route relation was being put together originally, the mapper was simultaneously fleshing out the route’s description in a Wikipedia article. The map in the article has never depended on OSM: it’s powered by a static GeoJSON file based on an old KML file that was probably traced from some other source. So fortunately this wasn’t a case of mapping for the renderer like we so often see with Wikipedia editors.

From the start, the relation has carried this description=* tag, which explicitly goes beyond the signage:

This relation is for roadways marked with Historic US 80 shields or designated by the California state government as Historic US 80, whether or not they were actually US 80. If you want to mark that a road was US 80, use the old_ref tag.

Yet the Caltrans Cultural Studies Office describes “Historic U.S. Highways” and a few other “Historic Corridors” as little more than memorial signage programs:

The California Legislature, through Continuing Resolutions, has officially recognized some routes as “historic,” but the designation has no ties to federal or California environmental laws. The legislative recognition primarily is honorific and allows for local groups to have “historic route” signs installed at their expenses, following the standards developed by the California Department of Transportation.

Essentially, the continuing resolution makes certain road segments eligible for sponsored signs. Do we care more about the roads or the signs?

If it’s possible to extrapolate linear geometry from the signs, then we could limit the route relation to just the segments marked by the signs. But I have a feeling that would be as futile as my effort to map northbound U.S. 101 Alternate in San José. There are a grand total of three signs for that route, all of them pointing in conflicting directions, and no documentation whatsoever. So I just guessed and mapped the bare minimum. It checks the box but isn’t going to be useful to anyone. A strictly by-the-signs Historic 80 relation would be just as useless. How far beyond the sign does the sign apply? That might be a matter of taste.

Alternatively, we could take the stance that, as with many byways around the country, the Historic 80 signs are verifiable proof of the route’s existence but not a definitive statement of the route’s extent. The route relation would include every segment eligible for signage, whether or not a local group has ponied up the money for a sign. Then, if someone cares enough about where the signs are posted, they can map individual traffic_sign=US:CA:S8 nodes. There aren’t too many.

There will be major changes with either approach. The route relation won’t be contiguous and it won’t include any segments of I-8 either way. In general, I’d omit historic byway designations from way tags. Way refs are a backwards compatibility shim, but these designations aren’t essential for wayfinding.

Sounds like you have enough info to get that little bit of concrete into OpenHistoricalMap. :wink:

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