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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> The old ION road
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AuthorThread
 03/18/2010 06:13:40 AM · #1
Every picture tells a story... show us YOUR picture(s) that tells us a story... here is one story in pictures...

Back in the 1850s and 1860s the ION road was the interstate freeway of it's day.

ION stands for (I)daho, (O)regon and (N)evada.

This was the main road traveling from what is now the Boise area through southwest Idaho, southeast Oregon and northern Nevada to Winnemucca. Even today this is one of the most remote areas in the United States.

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the infant son of Sacajewea when he was the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, was traveling this road in 1866 on his way to a gold strike in Montana when he got sick and died at the "Inskip Ranche" stage stop west of Jordan Valley, Oregon where he was buried near the ION road.





The Chabonneau burial site with its two distinct memorial types. Note the two pealed corn husks left by Native Americans by the plaque in the first picture...





Message edited by author 2010-03-18 06:29:06.
 03/18/2010 06:53:55 AM · #2
Cool stuff, I recall seeing a part years back..
 03/18/2010 09:14:08 AM · #3
There's a vaguely similar old track into San Diego through the Borrego desert, I believe it was called the Southern Emigrant Trail. You can still find distinct traces of it wherever it hasn't been overlaid with the modern road. It's astonishing to walk a section of this "road" through the desert mountains and realize that this was how the pioneers got WAGONS across the mountains, for heaven's sake. I imagine your ION trail's like that, a sense of awe when you stand upon it.

Good work!

R.
 03/18/2010 01:07:32 PM · #4
I quite literally live a block away from the original El Camino Real.

I should try to have a bit of fun with that..

Excellent photos and story thanks!

Message edited by author 2010-03-18 13:08:12.
 03/18/2010 06:39:06 PM · #5
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
There's a vaguely similar old track into San Diego through the Borrego desert, I believe it was called the Southern Emigrant Trail. You can still find distinct traces of it wherever it hasn't been overlaid with the modern road. It's astonishing to walk a section of this "road" through the desert mountains and realize that this was how the pioneers got WAGONS across the mountains, for heaven's sake. I imagine your ION trail's like that, a sense of awe when you stand upon it.


Another old road down in that area that goes through sand dunes in southern California just west of Yuma, Arizona is called "The Plank Road".

It was an automobile toll road made entirely of wood that crossed the Imperial Sand Dunes between 1914 to 1927. It was one lane wide with occasional pull outs so cars and other conveyances going in opposite directions could get past each other.

Parts of it can still be found near Interstate 8.

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