 |
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
One of the great things about living in San Diego is that in about an hour, you can drive from the coast to the mountains to the desert, which is where we’re headed today.
Borrego Springs is the northeastern outpost of San Diego County, an oasis at the edge of the Colorado Desert, which extends east to Arizona.
The desert offers its own unique ecosystem and its roads offer challenging driving. If you haven’t been there — what have you been doing with yourself?
 |
| Overlooking the park from Montezuma Valley Road. |
Today’s drive is one of our longest — about 161 miles, plus the distance from your home up Interstate 15 to Pala Road and back home from Ocotillo over Interstate 8 (my round trip from downtown San Diego was 250 miles). Budget the whole day, or make it a weekend... there are plenty of hotels and campgrounds to overnight in Borrego.
There are several ways to get to Borrego Springs, but I prefer the Montezuma Grade, County Highway S-22. From I-15, take Pala Road (SR-76) east past Lake Henshaw. Then make a left at SR-79 and a right at San Felipe Road (S-2). A left at Montezuma Valley Road will take you down to Borrego Springs.
Other ways to Borrego Springs are to continue down San Felipe Road, or to take SR-78 through Julian. I prefer Montezuma Valley Road because it generally has less traffic and goes right into Borrego Springs.
 |
| The road to Font’s Point. |
Opened in 1964 to provide a direct link to Borrego Springs, Montezuma Valley Road twists down the hill from the small farming community of Ranchita. According to Diana Lindsay’s excellent Anza-Borrego A to Z, the road took 160,000 tons of dynamite and nearly 10 years to build.
The County of San Diego set up a prison honor camp in Ranchita to provide labor, with prisoners hacking out the one million cubic yards of mostly granite to create the grade.
Drivers benefit from its banked curves and turnouts. There are a couple of view points that allow you to observe and learn about the endangered bighorn sheep that live on the rocky cliffs.
 |
| View at Font’s Point. |
Beyond lies the desert floor, stretching out endlessly to the east. The road, like Borrego Springs itself, was the brainchild of A. A. Burnand, who in the years following World War II envisioned another Palm Springs on the site. He brought in investors, including the late James S. Copley, president of the Copley Press, publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Highway S-2, Montezuma Valley Road, was, according to Lindsay, a compromise that eventually kept Borrego Springs from becoming another Palm Springs. Conservationists feared a major highway would be put through Coyote Canyon to the north and connect with Los Angeles.
Today, Coyote Canyon remains unspoiled. The town and surrounding Anza-Borrego Desert State Park stayed isolated and today is a wonderful place to spend a day, week or weekend during the fall, winter or spring months. This is, after all, a desert. It does get hot in the summer. For those of you that haven’t been, Anza-Borrego is not a place of sand dunes and camels (although camel fossils have been found).
It is rocky gorges and plains, remnants of a long-gone lake.
If you want dunes, head toward the Arizona border. The peaks and valleys make
for a fascinating landscape.
At the base of Montezuma Valley Road is a great place to start, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center. Exhibits tell the story of the valley’s geography and geology, native plants and animals. Park rangers can point out places to walk, hike, camp and off-road with an SUV or other vehicle. Brochures and other information are available at no charge.
If you’re lucky enough to hit the desert in the spring (following a wet winter), it is transformed from its usual gray/brown/white to amazing colors as the wildflowers bloom. For those who say we don’t have the changing of the seasons in Southern California... well, they don’t have desert flowers.
Even if you know where you want to go, the Visitor Center is the place to start, as it has an invaluable status board showing the trails that are open for driving, hiking and horseback riding — and their condition.
For example, I actually drove the dirt road to Fonts Point, which we’ll visit later, in a Mazda Miata. But that was in the spring, when rain had packed the sandy soil. Early in the winter, when it had been dry for months, the same road was a challenge in a four-wheel drive Jeep Wrangler equipped with fat tires.
Another good spot to visit is the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association. It’s located on Palm Canyon Drive just before you hit Christmas Circle, the roundabout in the center of town. In addition to an enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff, you can pick up a couple of driving-tour brochures that will help navigate the valley.
I took part of one tour, the “Erosion Road,” then doubled back to follow another tour, the “Southern Emigrant Trail,” down to present-day Interstate 8 and back to San Diego. I drove Erosion Road as far as Fonts Point, which is past the Borrego Springs Airport, about 11 miles east of town on S-22. A small sign points to the point, which is about five miles south of the Borrego-Salton Seaway portion of S-22.
The sandy road runs through a wash to the point, which provides a spectacular view of the erosion-sculpted Borrego Badlands. The point is today about 200 feet above a finger-like wash, created by water and wind. The drive is fun if you’re a novice off-roader, providing just enough slippery sand to make you appreciate power to all four wheels.
Stay on the road and don’t go crazy, just enjoy the drive. The road to Fonts Point is easy to follow. In fact, all the trails are well marked in Anza-Borrego. Plants and animals are protected and, because water is so scarce, the land is easily scarred. My advice: Respect the park, respect nature and respect the access that has been granted: stay on the marked roads.
The area is named after Father Pedro Font, a Franciscan Friar who accompanied Spanish Conquistador Juan Bautista de Anza on his explorations through the valley. Anza opened up the desert route that the Spanish used as an overland supply route between Mexico and settlements as far north as San Francisco.
According to Lindsay, from the top of Fonts Point, visitors can see Anza’s route as it crossed Borrego Valley and entered Coyote Canyon, en route to the San Gabriel Mission.
“Another more famous route in this desert area is the Southern Emigrant Trail (or County S-2),” said Lindsay, “erroneously signed as the ‘Great Southern Overland Stage Route of 1849.’”
The Southern Emigrant Trail became active in 1848 with the discovery of gold in California, but the stage coaches of the Butterfield Overland Mail did not operate until 1858, she said. Brochures are available at the Natural History Association office and the Visitor Center; or, watch for the signs.
South of Borrego Springs are many spots worth a visit. Box Canyon has spectacular views and a route originally hacked through by the hands of the Mormon Battalion in 1847. Lindsay adds that it was the Battalion who built the first wagon road to California during the Mexican War.
Further on is the restored Vallecito Stage Station. It was one of the stops, reports Lindsay, on the 1858-1861 Butterfield Overland Mail route between Tipton, Missouri, and San Francisco. Today, the station is the centerpiece of a county park offering picnicking and camping.
Don’t miss the left turn to Palm Spring, a bumpy mile off the highway. It’s here that Pedro Fages wrote of palm trees in 1782, the first mention of the Southern California symbol by the Spanish. From there, enjoy the arid hills and valleys down to Ocotillo and Interstate 8. Then it’s back over the mountains to San Diego and the ocean.
Southern California... you just can’t beat it.
