Qualla: Old Plank Road

Old Plank Road: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management California, Public domain. In 1912, a man called 'Colonel' Ed Fletcher drove from San Diego to Yuma to prove it could be done. It took 19.5 hours. The hardest part was the Algodones Dunes — a band of shifting sand in Imperial County that cars simply could not cross without something solid to drive on. Three years later, that something was built: 13,000 interlocking wooden planks laid across 6.5 miles of desert dunes, creating a road that was, by any measure, better than no road at all.

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Image: Bureau of Land Management California | Public domain

Old Plank Road: The Problem with the Dunes

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management California, Public domain. The Algodones Dunes occupy a strip of Imperial County along the California-Arizona border — the largest dune system in California, a stretch of fine sand that has blocked east-west travel since the first overland routes were attempted across the region. The Southern Emigrant Trai...

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Image: Bureau of Land Management California | Public domain

Old Plank Road: Thirteen Thousand Planks

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management California, Public domain. The first plank road was completed in 1915. It ran 6.5 miles across the dunes, using 13,000 interlocking wooden planks — not a continuous surface but a series of portable sections that could theoretically be moved. The design acknowledged its own limitations: the road was only ei...

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Image: Bureau of Land Management California | Public domain

Old Plank Road: Eleven Years and Then Pavement

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bureau of Land Management California, Public domain. The plank roads served their purpose for eleven years. On August 12, 1926, a paved highway opened across the Algodones Dunes, and the wooden planks were retired from active use. The transition from planks to pavement represented a genuine improvement in ease of travel — the paved...

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Image: Bureau of Land Management California | Public domain

Old Plank Road: What Remains in the Sand

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Perdelsky at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Fragments of the Old Plank Road still exist in the Algodones Dunes. Because the dunes shift with wind, sections of the original wooden planks have been exposed and reburied repeatedly over the past century. The surviving fragments are a California Historical Landmark — number 845...

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Image: Perdelsky at English Wikipedia | Public domain