Old Highway 395, Part 6: US 395 in Escondido, San Marcos and Vista via Escondido Blvd, Mission Road and Bonsall Bridge (1934-1947)

We continue on Escondido Boulevard up the hill, leaving Centre City Parkway behind.

The routing we will be following in this Part through Escondido is somewhat convoluted, made worse by the fact that the modern street names don't match the old ones. Both the then-new Centre City Pkwy routing and the old Escondido Blvd routing are shown on the 1951 schematic at right; click for a 48K enlargment. Compare this with the street names given on the ACSC strip map in the blurb above; the highway entered on Nutmeg Street, came across on Grand Avenue, up Lime Street, and then west and out on an unclear routing, but was probably Grant Avenue (not Grand again). None of these street names except Grand still exist, but the street names next to them still do, and these streets are still named in alphabetical order with the exception of Grant. Since Nutmeg must be between M and O, the only match would be Maple and Orange Sts, and the street between them is Escondido Blvd; similarly, Lime must be between K and M, meaning Kalmia and Maple Sts, and that is now Broadway. (For that matter, Centre City Parkway runs between Orange and Quince Sts; it was formerly Pine St.)

That leaves Grant Avenue, surrounded by Lincoln Ave and Washington Avenue on our 1951 map, neither named consecutively nor alphabetically. The only match for that today by location is Mission Avenue, and that is in fact the continuous routing we will follow. Notice that these turns were done both to go through the downtown business district and then over the Escondido Creek; it seems that in the 1930s Nutmeg north of Grand was not a completed road and even on the 1951 map it is not shown as through to Grant Avenue. The extension of modern Escondido Blvd all the way through to modern Mission Avenue was a much later addition and has nothing to do with old US 395.

This terminal END begins SDCo S14, the first of the two county routes we will follow for this section. Notice the Business Route 15 and 78 shields in the background; this is a holdover of CA 78's second routing, which we'll mention in Part 8 as well. However, the oldest routing of CA 78 still continues with us west.

Please don't steal these. San Diego county makes a slick-looking Historic Route sign and they should be left up for future generations; in fact, here's some they did for old US 80.

Main St is now bypassed by Vista Village Dr, which makes sense as this road would have been very hard to expand. Notice the old Playhouse and the small shops and businesses.

Our first look at the old Bonsall Bridge. For many years there was no sign here, and then a Historic Bridge sign was put up soon after the bridge was bypassed. This picture was taken in 2006.

Continue to Part 7