Sidetrack Adventures

A dead-straight road slices 50 miles through the Mojave, eerily aligned toward Palmdale, its purpose unknown, its origin debated, and its silence unsettling.

Opened in 1933, the Ridge Route Alternate carved a scenic path through Piru Gorge, once a vital highway, now partly submerged beneath Pyramid Lake, its past hidden in the desert.

The Mojave Megaphone looms over the desert, a strange steel structure with no known origin. Was it for railroads, or something more mysterious?

Highway 395 winds through California’s remote northeast, where sparse towns and quiet landscapes reveal deep roots in the state’s pioneer past.

Once a lively Route 66 stop, Two Guns, Arizona is now a haunting ghost town, its ruins, abandoned zoo, and the eerie Apache Death Cave echoing its dark past.

The Appian Way, Rome’s “Queen of Roads,” began in 312 BC, an ancient highway of empire, lined with ruins and history, still echoing the footsteps of the past.