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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Highway stretches into past O ne of the major news events for this area back in 1963 was the opening of the Collier Tunnel on Highway 101, about three miles south of the Oregon state line. The new tunnel replaced a road over Oregon Mountain that climbed 950 feet in less than four miles. The old road had more than 100 curves and many switchbacks. The press release from the California Highway Department said finishing the tunnel was a major step toward completing of the "Winnemucca to the Sea" highway. I had been in Oregon since 1948, but prior to seeing that news release, I had never heard of Winnemucca to the Sea. I discovered this road was to stretch from Winnemucca, Nev., through Southern Oregon, and into Northern California where it would end at the sea (the Pacific Ocean) in Crescent City. That Saturday, July 27, reporters from the wire services and several of the newspapers of Oregon and California were joined by television crews from as far away as Portland and San Francisco. As a news story, the dedication of a tunnel didn't rate very high on the national scene. But it was a slow weekend for news, and the gaggle of reporters and camera operators became almost as much a curiosity for the crowd as the collection of politicos who delivered speeches prior to the ribbon cutting. The man who rammed the tunnel project through the California legislature was state Senator Randolph Collier, a man with a shock of silver hair and voice to match. He rose from a position as a Yreka police judge to the state senate, representing a two-county district that was larger than some states. As chairman of the highway committee, Collier became known as "the father of California freeways." The notion of naming the new tunnel for him was first made in an editorial in the Illinois Valley News, of Cave Junction. The name was approved by a joint resolution of the senate and assembly in 1959, four years before the tunnel was completed. The dream of the "Winnemucca to the Sea Highway" started on a two-lane west-bound from that little town in Nevada's high desert country. People who lived in that remote, sparsely populated region imagined a route that wandered west across Souther Oregon and ended at the sea shore in California, 490 miles to the west. The dream seemed outlandish to lots of folks. There was no road at all across Lake County's sagebrush country into Nevada then. But that didn't deter Lake County Judge C.H. Langslet. Judge Langslet (in those days the title of county judge went to the person elected chairman of a county board of commissioners) championed a route that had to cross two 6,000-foot passes as it wound from Lakeview through Lake and Harney counties toward Nevada. Some called it "the road to nowhere," but by 1962, that rather primitive section of road from Lakeview to Winnemucca was completed, and on September 22, a bronze plaque was dedicated to Judge Langslet at the 6,200 feet elevation, 60 miles east of Lakeview. A major obstacle to gaining public acceptance of the Winnemucca to the Sea Highway was that various sections of the road had different road numbers as it wound through three states. That began to change years later when Oregon built a new road from Lake of the Woods to White City. Nevada and Oregon agreed to designate the entire stretch from Nevada to White City as Highway 140. Plans were discussed to push Highway 140 through vacant land from White City to Interstate 5 at the Seven Oaks interchange north of Central Point. From there, the plan was for the road to join Interstate 5 to Grants Pass, and post Highway 140 signs below the freeway signs. Then the idea was to change the name of the federal highway linking Grants Pass and Crescent City from Highway 199 to Highway 140. But that never happened, primarily because Highway 199 is a federal highway. Supporters of the plan discovered they would probably set new records for red tape if they tried to change the number of a federal highway. In the years since 1963, Nora and I have driven sections of the Winnemucca To The Sea Highway many times, but we've never covered the whole route in one trip. The highway is a real time-saver for anyone driving from here to the northern tier of states. Highway 140 passes through country that's still wide-open and sparsely populated. I remember a large sign near where Highway 140 heads west from Winnemucca that warns motorists there will be no gas for about 70 miles. Crossing two high-mountain passes and descending miles of steep grades calls for careful driving, but there are no traffic jams. Although nobody talks much about the Winnemucca to the Sea Highway these days. I have been assured that the idea of a highway sporting the same number in three states is not dead. It's just waiting for someone like Senator Randolph Collier or Judge C.H. Langslet to sell the dream again. Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA