Highway 99 was built when automobile sovereignty was at its apex -- a road connecting Mexico and Canada and uniting California, Oregon, and Washington with them on an endless strip of road. It passed through a myriad of worlds, each slightly (and sometimes more than slightly) different from the world adjacent. A number of small towns grew around US 99, the best known of them being the towns of Tulare and Kern county, immortalized by country songsmiths of the mid-century.

In recent (well, not that recent), US Highway 99 has become State Highways 99 in California, Oregon, and Washington (British Columbia, in fact, has also preserved its own Highway 99), its function replaced by Interstate 5, best known as a drag strip connecting the San Francisco Bay Area and the L.A. Basin. I-5 is not a drive without redeeming elements of its own, following an ocean path between San Diego and Orange County, crusing through gems like Harris Ranch on the Los Angeles to Sacramento run, and cutting a path through heavily wooded areas in Oregon and Washington. It isn't, however, the same cultural experience.

As a denizen of California (in the Los Angeles area for the first 21 years of my life, in the Bay Area since then), I'm focusing on the experience of Highway 99 in California, the road that still defines California's Central (San Joaquin) Valley. With the recent publication of Stan Yogi's wonderful anthology Highway 99: A Literary Journey, a great deal of attention has been focused on the culture, history, and people of the Central Valley. At the College of the Sequoias, a class has been developed, reflecting on this rich heritage, and similar curricula are being developed in institutions throughout the state.

Bay Area journalists have also traditionally taken an interest in doings in the Central Valley. I've tracked down three articles in the San Francisco Chronicle that center on the road and the land. The first of these appeared on January 26th of this year; The Rivers Ran Through It details the experience of this year's 40 year floods in the Central Valley. The second article is an brief on the late 1996 status of California's most-talked about (and annoying) traffic light, the stoplight that once stood front-and-center on Highway 99 in Livingston. The third is a Jon Carroll column entitled I Heard it on the Grapevine, which talks a little bit about the Grapevine (now belonging to Interstate 5), that connects Los Angeles with the San Joaquin Valley.

And, of course, the area has its own set of journalistic voices. The Modesto Bee has a web site up and running with the lowdown on local events. Fresno Online is a digital newspaper with events in and around California's most central metropolitan area. If you're visiting, they have information from the Convention and Visitors Bureau. Stocktonet provides a similar service for the greater Stockton area.

Elite.net is the biggest ISP in the Central Valley. They maintain a source for local issues in Merced County, which should be of some interest if you're planning on going native. One of their big clients is the Castle Air Museum in glorious Atwater, California. If you're aeronatutically inclined, it's not a bad place to drop by if you're in the neighborhood.