Now & Then: A brief history of Priest Grade,

Travelers to Big Oak Flat, Groveland and Yosemite National Park via the North Gate must climb “The Grade,” a steep, 1,600-foot ascent connecting Moccasin at the bottom to the rolling terrain at the top.

This stretch of highway is etched into the minds of many area residents for many various reasons: beautiful terrain and view vista, lack of guard rails, frightening shear 100-plus-foot dropoffs, lack of shoulders and winding switchbacks.

Priest Grade/highway is named after Margaret Priest, proprietor of the early waystation and hotel at the crest and a community leader. The Priest Grade boasts two different roads — Old and New — on opposite sides of Grizzly Gulch.

The first track up the hill was a steep trail on the south side of the Gulch. In the 1850s, early miners used it to travel to surrounding gold camps. The trail was so rugged that a replacement — the Grizzly Gulch Wagon Road (now the Old Priest Grade) was built in 1859.

Even in 1900 with the arrival of freight wagons, it could take two days to haul a heavy load from Chinese Camp to Big Oak Flat. The community began to advocate for a faster and easier road. With the arrival of the automobiles, that didn’t have the power to ”make the grade” — initially steampowered vehicles called “locomobiles” and later gas-fueled cars reinforced the need for an improved road.

With a can-do attitude and remarkable community spirit, local citizens banded together to build a road without government assistance. In 1911, they surveyed a new

route on the north side of the gulch. They donated labor, equipment and supplies and began construction, mostly by hand and draft animals. They completed a rough 8-footwide roadbed along most of the new route, then the private project stopped due to problems in financing and gaining access from some landowners.

Sal Ferretti, county supervisor from Groveland, convinced other supervisors in July 1912 to fund the road’s completion as a public benefit. In October 1912, the county highway was approved and work resumed. By 1914, a 14-foot-wide road named Priest Hill Highway was finished. It was widened in 1924 and paved in 1925, and improved as Highway 120 in succeeding years.

More than a century later, the road is still called “New” Priest Grade.

Courtesy photo (above); courtesy photo / Southerntuolumne County Historical Society Archives (right) A horse-drawn carriage makes its way down Priest Grade in this undated photo (above). A granite marker commemorates the completion of “Priest Hill Highway” (left).