Exploring California's Highway 39 - Closed For Over 40 Years

I'm from the UK and due to my health I spend a lot of time having to lie down in a darkened room. Your videos allow me to go on adventures to places I'll never get to visit. Many thanks

Hello I'm from this area and have driven on this closed off road. I was camping in Crystal lake when a fire broke out somewhere near the HOV area before East Fork so no one could get back down highway 39. We were being smoked out so they had no choice but to open the closed road for the first time in like 50 years I think they said. We went like 3 cars at a time slowly. It was amazing it was so up high the view was beautiful and there were boulders the size of ambulances you had to swerve around on the road and a huge section of the road was missing.. one lane had fallen in a rock slide so it was nerve racking driving on the side that was still holding up. We made it through and it connected to Los Angeles Crest Highway 2, near snow crest. Definitely glad I got to experience that. Oh and I'll never forget a young woman who drove up to my car to ask what was going on in a panic. She said she was from Virginia on vacation.. I told her casually to follow the road that they were going to open. She was the first one to go on the road. 😅

As an Australian who has only visited the USA once, I have to say that watching that drive up to Crystal Lake makes me want to start planning another trip.

I'm one of the few lucky people to have been able to drive on this road myself. I'm 24, and at the time of January 1st, 2019, the gates on both ends had been opened, and that same boulder that he walked by has been there all these years! So many cars were driving up and down this road enjoying the beautiful scenery of the New Years Day, and there was even snow on the road too, making it more memorable! Sadly, it was closed again the day after as some workers who had been using the road to get over to Highway 2 had left the gates open for the long weekend, but it was an experience like no other!

Hey Steve, just for your info I work for the company that rebuilt all of the rockslide damage to the road back in the mid-2000s after 9/11 Homeland security mandated that the road must be open for emergency egress from the LA county in case of an emergency situation a company I work for at the time we spent nearly a year installing poured-in-place pile to shore up the slides that have closed the roads many years prior

I lived in Glendora for 28 years and worked for Verizon, so spent a lot of time up Hwy 39 providing service to the new tracts they built right before getting into the mountainous areas, also service to the residents at the dam and the Crystal lake campground, especially after fires. I loved going up there, you’re instantly out of the city with beautiful views! Thanks for the memories!

Been up there multiple times on motorcycle and always wondered when the heck the road was going to be finished, but turns out it's been out forever already. Thanks for the history lesson.

My brother when he was 15 in the early 60s invented cookie soup at Crystal lake. Thats a story for another time. Great to see a highway i traveled many times. The ranger station above the upper lake was where i was taken when i had had been hit in the head by boulder as i was climbing down the rocky bank about a mile above the station. I had been deer hunting and took a short cut back down to the highway when the rock fell on me. Thank Jesus i survived as i received 16 stitches from it. Any way awesome to see the area again after 60+ years.

I grew up in Arcadia during the 50s and 60s. My Dad would take us up to Crystal lake on several lazy Saturdays. This section of Hwy 39 allowed us to make the loop up from Azusa and down The Angeles Crest Highway (Hwy 2) through Altadena and home to Arcadia. When I started driving I drove this stretch of 39 many times. Thanks for the memories!

In a suprise to absolutely no one besides those unaware of just how much wear and tear traffic generates, roads do hold up for 50 years or more if you don't have heavy vehicles barreling down them a million times a year. Highway 39 definitely does look like it would quickly become one of my favorite bicycle climbs if I lived in the area.

I got to drive on the closed section back in 09 while working for the forest service. It was pretty rad. We even got to see a pack of Big Horn sheep while we creeped along towards Angeles Crest Highway

I instantly recognized the image of that gate in the thumbnail; been going to Crystal Lake and San Gabriel valley all my life. My dad's a jeeper, and every once in a while we'd go offroading to the canyon. We haven't been offroading in a long time, but we still visit Crystal Lake. Good memories of family and friends up there. Awesome vid, always wondered what lied beyond that final gate.

I grew up in Northern California and videos like this make me so homesick for the time I spent with my parents back in the 80’s when life was so much easier. Those who didn’t have a childhood in California just don’t understand the love appeal it had.

I rode my motorcycle through a snowstorm on that road in 1977. Epic. Great video

Having traveled into that area since the late 60's, I appreciate that area. Just behind you in the beginning of the video, that gate is a relatively new one as another is up about 1 more mile that was the closing point at another very wide spot in the road...not sure why they decided to stop people closer to the turn off to Crystal Lake. More than 10 years ago, I did witness,from a distance with binoculars, many trucks going back and forth on that road at the damaged area. I concluded that it was being repaired. Just a few months later, I drove to the junction of the 2 and 39...I walked down the 39 to where I had years before witnessed the big landslide that had closed the road. I found that there was major terracing down from the road to stabilize it. The road was complete and paved but a bit narrow with no yellow line and no guardrails. No only that, a major fire had just erupted further down the canyon that I could see as a narrow plume of smoke. As I walked two trucks filled with firefighters passed by me...further convincing me that the road was completed and done for emergency vehicles only as I later learned. Don't know what the road is like now but I suspect they keep enough big rocks out of the road in do enough maintenance to allow emergency vehicles to pass. For many years, Hwy 2 continuing east from the 2 and 39 junction was closed to through traffic. Now, as you said it is also closed now to the west before the tunnels and this junction. Yet I believe the emergency vehicles can get through. The West Fork, that you mentioned, was a 7 mile paved road to Cogswell Dam that was very popular and spectacular. This canyon was a destination for fly fishermen at one time and was stocked with trout. Unfortunately is suffered to being the origin of the Bob Cat Fire and subsequent major floods and washouts. Something similar happened in 1969 and it took years to recover. It is now closed but you could walk it but someone might yell at you.... 😐

Sometimes I forget just how stunningly beautiful California is.

Wow Steve, memories. I'm 65 and a local and I remember driving my old VW Bus up and down that road a few times from 1976-77. Even back then with the road intact, it was always a bit sketchy. The drop-off from the side of the road was crazy. Thanks for this posting.

Thank you for making this video. I went up the mountain for the first time yesterday 6/4/23 and it was beautiful. I've driven around the base of the mountain many times, but never drove all the way up. The drive is great and the views even better. The road is around 20 miles long and it takes a little more than 30 minutes from the base to the top, give or take a few. I found this video after my drive and loved the fact you covered the history about the road and what's been done since.

There is a perfectly straight and flat 1.5 mile section of highway near my house that was bypassed. It runs under an local highway. It looks like driving over a runway. Pretty strange. When closed, concrete barriers were dropped in place. The next day, those were unofficially moved and the area had a new drag strip.

This is one of my weekend motorcycle rides. I was considering getting a street legal dirt bike to go through that last 4 miles that were cut off. It is one of the most beautiful views you will ever see if you're into mountain wilderness. When I'd go up there I used to buy my snacks at that same store. Haven't been up there since my buddy had a bike accident, be safe everyone.