California’s loneliest roads
Traffic got you down? Are you longing for the open road?
A new study by the fleet management company Geotab might offer some guidance. The company culled the least-traveled roads across the country, ranking them on both their scenic appeal — as judged by nature photographer James Q Martin — and the number of cars that travel them annually.
Upon a special request, they also provided the Golden State’s top 10 roads, where you’re least likely to drive while staring at someone’s bumper, though these roads were not ranked on their beauty.
The 143-mile stretch on State Route 139 from Susanville to the Oregon border in Northeastern California landed in the No. 1 spot as the state’s loneliest road. It also came in as the fifth most scenic route in the country. The quiet highway skirts Eagle Lake before cutting through the Modoc National Forest and winding past spartan volcanic landscapes.
Six of the top 10 least
traveled roads are in Northern California, crisscrossing the ShastaTrinity, Six Rivers, Klamath, Lassen and Modoc national forests. Three of the routes run roughly east to west with end points in the wide swath of eastern California blanketed by the indomitable Sierra Nevada mountains, passing through or into the Eldorado National Forest, Yosemite National Park and the Inyo National Forest.
To suss out the least traveled roads, Geotab used federal traffic count data from the Highway
Performance Monitoring System and each byway’s annual average daily traffic score. Each road had be more than 10 miles long.
California’s SR 139 saw an average of 1,437 cars daily, compared to California State Route 88, which fell into the No. 10 spot and saw more than four times as many cars, or 6,566 on average.
Company officials said the effort was all about bringing awareness to the quieter and less congested routes, offering travelers a chance to take the roads less traveled.
Here are the top 10, ranked by Geotab in order of each road’s annual average daily traffic count.