BILL ANALYSIS
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SCR 37|
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CONSENT
Bill No: SCR 37
Author: Wiggins (D)
Amended: 4/21/10
Vote: 21
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE : 8-0, 6/15/10
AYES: Lowenthal, Huff, Ashburn, DeSaulnier, Harman, Kehoe,
Pavley, Simitian
NO VOTE RECORDED: Oropeza
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : Senate Rule 28.8
SUBJECT : Robert Louis Stevensons Historic Trail to
Silverado
SOURCE : Author
DIGEST : This resolution names a portion of State Highway
Route 29 in Napa County as the "Robert Louis Stevenson's
Historic Trail to Silverado."
ANALYSIS : This resolution recognizes the portion of
State Highway Route (SR) 29 in Napa County, considered the
forgotten last leg of the trail to Silverado, for its
historical importance in the development of California and
particularly of Napa and Lake Counties.
Background on the Silverado Trail
In the 1850s, volunteers built the Old Bull Trail from what
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is today the City of Calistoga over Mount St. Helena in
Napa County to what is today Middletown in Lake County.
Due to grades exceeding 35 percent along the Old Bull
Trail, which prevented wagon travel, the Legislature, in
1866, authorized John Lawley to construct a private toll
road to replace most of the Old Bull Trail starting
approximately 1.5 miles north of the City of Calistoga.
The toll road over Mount St. Helena was completed in 1868,
with grades of just 12 percent. Today, this toll road is
still in use as a public road and is known both as the "Old
Toll Road" and as "Lawley Road."
In 1872, John Lawley, along with William Montgomery and
William Patterson, founded the Monitor Ledge Mine on Mount
St. Helena just off the Old Toll Road and later renamed
that mine and the surrounding community "Silverado."
During one point in its short three-year life, the mining
town of Silverado housed over 1,000 people. Many more
people came and went during that time in search of
fortunes, every one of whom traveled the toll road and the
1.5-mile remnant of the Old Bull Trail that connected that
toll road to Calistoga and to the rest of the Napa Valley.
In the summer of 1880, a young author, running low on cash,
and his new bride left their honeymoon suite in the resort
town of Calistoga to become squatters in the mining town of
Silverado, which had been abandoned five years earlier.
That author was Robert Louis Stevenson.
Robert Louis Stevenson detailed his trip to Napa Valley in
his travelogue, The Silverado Squatters . In The Silverado
Squatters , the best-selling author introduced the world to
the beauty of the Napa Valley and the quality of its wine,
famously describing it as "bottled poetry."
In a chapter of The Silverado Squatters entitled "Starry
Drive," Robert Louis Stevenson recounted the brilliant
night sky above the 1.5-mile remnant of the Old Bull Trail
as he rambled back to his honeymoon perch one summer
evening. Few roads have ever been described so vividly.
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In 1921, a local farm bureau successfully petitioned the
County of Napa to name a series of rough roads and trails
running along the eastern spine of the Napa Valley as
"Silverado Trail" after the mining town Robert Louis
Stevenson made famous.
Although that collection of roads running along Napa
Valley's eastern spine ended at Tubbs Lane just north of
the Old Toll Road, the County of Napa ended the newly named
Silverado Trail 1.5 miles short of the Old Toll Road
because the county was making arrangements to turn that 1.5
mile-stretch of road over to the state to incorporate it
into a new modern highway.
As a result of Napa County's decision to incorporate this
stretch of historic road into a modern highway, the history
of this pioneer pathway, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Starry
Drive," and the last leg of the trail to Silverado, has
been lost.
That stretch of road, predating John Lawley's Old Toll
Road, was originally built by California pioneers in the
1850s shortly after California's statehood as part of the
Old Bull Trail, and is now memorialized by a historical
marker in Middletown in Lake County.
This resolution:
1.Designates the portion of SR 29 from post mile 37.9 to
post mile 39.5 in Napa County as the "Robert Louis
Stevenson's Historic Trail to Silverado."
2.Requests that the Department of Transportation determine
the cost of erecting appropriate signs, consistent with
the signing requirements for the state highway system,
and to erect those signs upon receiving donations from
nonstate sources sufficient to cover that cost.
FISCAL EFFECT : Fiscal Com.: Yes
JJA:mw 6/29/10 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: NONE RECEIVED
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