A long road vital to the region's past development, Highway74 California, also known as the Ortega highway, seems to be far more than just another dangerous road - it may be haunted and has become a modern hotspot for UFO activity.
It was the beginning of another scorching summer in the San Jacinto valley...
Due to the desert heat living in the area is difficult, and boredom for a native is utter torture so people often hit the highway in one direction or another - most not knowing its dark reputation, even fewer, the origins of this reputation.
I grew up in Hemet California, where these days in the valley area there is little in terms of "entertainment" within city limits, so most people hit the highway to go out of town or wander the local hills and mountains.
After decades of urbanization, one would think that this old dusty town bisected by Highway 74, one of the deadliest highways in California would have a livelier social scene, but the cities are as desolate as the hills around - so if you live in the area and are lucky enough to get away, natives take refuge in the surrounding national desert forests.
Highway 74 is often the highway that gets you there.
Many vacationers go on drives out to some of the cities that lie further inland:
This highway and the cities along its route are firmly nestled within the barren and lonely deserts that seem to stretch forever into each direction and lead from the coast deep into the California interior towns including: San Juan Capistrano, Palm Springs, Indio, Idyllwild, and now days - gaming casinos!
Progress almost masks the misery, but for the most part, the Ortega highway 74 was always lonely, desolate, miserable and dangerous.
Indeed, there are a lot more people out on the highway these days - which could be why the media and public are realizing it's a very ominous place, but from what I have learned of the region's history, there may be far more to this puzzle, more than bad driving, sharp curves and missing backpackers.
Places With Tragic Histories Tend to Also Have Paranormal History
I heard in various news reports that our local area had a bit of a "paranormal" history and did some research only to find that not much existed on the surface. As the old saying goes, "he who wins the war, writes the history, and in the case of this rather large patch of desert, it's true as anyone who lives in the area is usually aware of the long history of Native American heritage in the region.
With all the recent reports of paranormal activity there had to be something behind so many of these experiences - the desert held its secrets close, but I was determined to pry them free.
Living in the region I have many memories of parades, rodeos, pageants and fairs, but after going out onto that highway armed with a camera, I have come to realize that there is so much more to the story.
In fact, from a historical perspective, it's almost impossible to overlook that the region has long sought to disavow a very dark past.
One rooted in frontier justice, Indian wars, and resettlement, as well as a concurrent drive to exploit a huge expanse of desert land, at any cost. While these events have been forgotten by modern residents, certainly the land remembers much - and so too does history.
What I initially found most disconcerting and spooky was the knowledge that the land beneath this road is soaked in blood - lots of it.
In the beginning this wasn't the case - we must keep in mind that at first - the land was sacred.
This point harkens back to discussions about other locations in the United States with similar reports including Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, Chaco Canyon New Mexico, Devils Tower in Butte Wyoming and the Black Hills in South Dakota.
What do all of these sites have in common with the territory covered by Highway 74?
- They were all sacred lands dating back to the very origins of Native American cultures which lived on the land.
- They were revered by the Native tribes believing them to be contact points between this world and the one beyond from which the "gods" come.
- They were viscously fought over for centuries until final settlement by US authorities at the end of the 19th century.
- The lands were cursed by the Natives who were dispossessed from them.
- They are parts of Native American heritage sites and are currently parts of national forests - even Highway 74 runs through at least two reservations and two national forests.
- They are largely mountainous regions with extremely high contents of quartzite - the same material used to make Egyptian obelisks and parts of tombs.
- They have been sources of constant reports of bizarre apparitions, ghosts, portals and UFO's.
- With the exception of California, most of these areas are off limits to modern development
- Each site has a central point and stretches out for miles around in concentric circles indicating that whatever forces are at work here emanate from the focal point and affected people and animals far from the epicenter.
- They are often sources of ancient petroglyphs including in California along Highway 74
These points alone wouldn't be particularly scary but for successive generations thereafter people have been experiencing - bizarre freak accidents, missing persons - and all sorts of paranormal activity including disappearing apparitions and even UFO's.
This knowledge is of great value to the public. In other words, if there is some kind of dangerous traits or qualities that exist in the fabric of the land, or if there are unknown beings sharing the land with us knowing about this may help mitigate the threat.
I would go so far as to say that knowledge of what is out there can save lives.
You May Be Done - But the Past Is Not
If I haven't learned anything else after this experience, I have come to realize that 'you may be done with the past, but the past may not be done with you'.
Legends have a way of originating in truth, and for me I had this sudden urge to find it:
What was the truth behind the legend of the Highway of Death - State Highway 74?Why are so many people reporting a slew of paranormal interactions? And how long has this been going on? Exactly how many people come up missing a year, a decade, overall?Was it the road, was it the land, the history, or something even more strange or weird, than what one can even imagine?
To better understand this, I began to document what I was experiencing in my own home where I lived only two blocks from Florida Ave (what Hemet residents call Highway 74), but it didn't stop there, I went out and explored the highway from end to end.
I guess in the beginning I simply wanted to go out and see with my own eyes the larger picture of the place that had been home for much of my life. I wanted to peel back the layers which possibly concealed something very different than flowers and sunshine. Essentially, I wanted to go past the visible "end" of the road.
When a person is experiencing some type of paranormal phenomena the motivation to unmask the reason and source can often become somewhat obsessive - or so it may seem to others, I call it vigilance.
In any case: for me this was certainly true.
Recounting My First "Ghost Hunt"
Since that's pretty much what it was, took place along the Highway 74 - toward the Eastern end no doubt the most paranormal part of the highway.
At the time, I figured that a highway known as "THE HIGHWAY OF DEATH", had to have something of a past, and after a couple of years of on the ground research, I've come to the personal belief that this is a well-deserved reputation, but it's hard to say exactly when this began - it was a bit difficult to put my finger on exactly where to start.
So, I did two things: first I went to a museum, and then... I went up the mountain.
The following is brief summary about some of the odd history which surrounds the area along the Highway 74, particularly the Eastern end where it terminates in the desert.
To Better Understand What We're Dealing With
Stretching from the coastal areas between Los Angeles and Orange County, this state highway has a very lively reputation for having an extremely high mortality rate... in other words, allegedly an unusual amount of people dies or disappear from along its length every year. Not only that, in modern times there have been a litany of reports of paranormal phenomena witnessed by unsuspecting motorists and travelers.
This legend seems to have begun long before the modern era, however.
While worthy of some statistical analysis, it was my intention to get into the field and experience for myself just why and how this reputation has come about: is there anything to the claim that Highway 74 is truly a "highway of death"?
What is the number one cause of mortality along Highway 74?
While in the modern era the number one cause of death is most obviously automobile accidents, years ago it was most likely:
- starvation,
- exposure,
- disease
- or a bullet.
With all we see today, it's easy to forget that this entire region was still vastly unsettled up until the early 1900s and even then, was sparsely dotted by rancher towns which imposed the death penalty against rustlers, horse thieves, witches and Indians - and where Christian cults escaped persecution.
The road was the death of the old ways.
The roots of "why" this was the highway of death go back beyond the first people who settled this land, the Native Americans.
Yet by the numbers and over the centuries, this one stretch of highway is the scene of untold amounts of grief, as the cost in human lives for traveling along its lengths has proven quite high over time and its unfolding tragedy is embedded into the local memory, and awareness.
It's a road that literally ran through Indian territory, and an area central to Native American burial grounds and trade routes of Proto Azteca Language speaking people and who themselves took over the vast Mayan trade empire, of which this land was once part.
Surprisingly it was migration into the western seaboard by the Spanish, and the perils of this journey by subsequent waves which seem to be the root of the modern morbid history, as this area though remote, was hotly contested by both natives and migrants after the first interaction with Spaniards in 1769 by the Portola expedition. Needless to say, the occupants immediately became "royal subjects".
Along is length several tribes traded, and it was used by the Spaniard's native guides to access the region bringing in missionaries and exporting goods to Spain. At least part of this road existed in colonial times, long before railroads.
There would be many more people to come, and eventually donkey trails would lead to old track roads, that in turn would lead to railways, and ultimately Highways such as State Route 74.
The Land Was Still Wild
As time passed remaining Native Americans were fully dispossessed and assigned to reservations.
In the early 1900's much was done to "civilize" this region.
For example, to maintain the status quo army barracks were built far into the desert. Dotting the landscape, bases these create a line stretching past the Salton Sea, well beyond the state's borders into Nevada and New Mexico.
In Hemet barracks were erected feet from the railway station where the current police station stands, and later an air base to support the U.S. conflict in World War I was added on the edge of the western part of town.
These improvements created a degree of stability in this area there-after - but the land was still wild - and too the people which lived and walked upon it.
Relative safety and a day's wage were huge invitations to wayward workers, immigrants, and farmers, but not just the lowly...
Years before this, Carpet baggers, land speculators, ranchers and miners invaded the region in the decades after the Civil War. A diverse milieu of 19th century humanity which for a long while made the Inland Empire quite ungovernable. This region is a vast arid land crossed by dangerous lonely roads and home to spiney bushes, cactus and scrub brush, any pedestrians faced huge risk to live and limb. 
In the mountains an insane asylum was built, which specialized in catering to the rich and elite. This asylum was later burnt down under mysterious circumstances, and the Idyllwild inn and Welcome Center stand in its place today. (The history of Idyllwild is intriguing and surely, I will return to this in another installment).
Thus, in the early 1900's travel to, within, and from this region became hugely popular - particularly to the wealthy and elite. In fact, back then it's fair to say that Highway 74 led to "nowhere" - and that's just how people liked it.
This created a flood of more and more people who gravitated out to this area for cheap farmland, and the freedom due to wide open spaces. Also, people sought privacy, and an escape from the growing urban areas in the coastal cities.
It's almost ironic that such a hot and severe landscape would attract such attention, with its epicenter based at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, in the San Jacinto Valley.
History is a rabbit hole sometimes
What struck me about this entire discussion is that having lived along the highway for the greater part of my life, I had never heard this, NOT ONCE.
Until I searched for more information.
To my surprise this little stretch of state highway did in fact have a rather dark reputation, one that originated with the Native American's and exists to this day. The urge to physically explore what I once took as "boring" and "mundane", was irresistible.
And so I did.
Days before I had shared my idea with my wife Nancy,
who is usually very supportive of things I'm interested in... adventures and such. She agreed and that night we drove our 2017 Impala up the mountain. It was the kind of car made for the trip, and it performed well going up.
I had been experimenting with ghost boxes at home and wanted to test the whole experience by going somewhere else, some foreign unknown but "energetic" place.
In Hemet this could be many places at night or day, the citrus fields, back hills, desert scrubland, mountain's, valley's and even an Indian reservation. Highway 74 would be the easiest and most accessible place where in my thinking a ghost hunt couldn't go too wrong.
It's a road that after leaving the settled areas, to this day winds through miles and miles of desolate and rather uninhabited scrubland and even desert...it was a great place to start - and I wouldn't be disappointed.
I packed some cameras, extra batteries, and the particular ghost box. My strategy was simple. Ascend the mountain stopping ever so often and turning on the video player and the ghost box.
I was skeptical at first, but that evening as the sun began to set and we made our way up the side of the mountain I knew from talking up spirits in my home, you needed to initiate contact by intent, and some device.
A quarter of the way up the mountain I snapped on my right-hand blinker and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder.
It was a deserted area which looked out over the lower valley from where we sat on in our car, on the cliffs edge, its face dropping sharply off just a few feet away... there was no room for being a tourist here, but still the view was immense, the darkness creeping across the sky chasing away the red glow beyond the horizon towards the coast.
The wind blew gently and created a low howl as it threaded the rocky face of the cliffs. We were alone, with the exception of a passing car, the world was almost completely silent.
Almost forgetting our purpose, we nervously chatted a bit and tried to get photos of the disappearing sun set from the car windows... when we heard these sounds just outside our door. Outside a few feet the world dropped off into total blackness.
And then we hear it...
First, we thought maybe it was some type of snake or rabbit, but truly one would wonder how a rabbit would be about at this moment, and snakes slithered. Thump, thump, thump, thump... fricking footsteps in the grass! It took a moment to really accept that what we were hearing was real.
I asked my wife, "babe, do you hear that?"
She looks at me, eyes wide, nodding "yes".
It wasn't much, certainly it was nothing to be recorded that would have meaning to any onlookers, but it was a start, a scary start. We chickened out at that moment, not thinking about cameras or ghost boxes, turned the car on and stepped on the gas.
It didn't stall like in the movies - at least not yet. Immediately the car had us back on the highway, now almost completely dark, a cloud of creepy dust thrown up by my wheels, turned blood red by out taillights followed us on up the mountain.
Just as our hearts began to settle, the car began to heave, and hesitate. We had passed the final turnoff and were almost to the summit of the mountain highway when the car began to sputter. The lights dimmed briefly, and the motor made a strange guttural sound as if it were about to just shut off... But it didn't.
Then as suddenly as it started -it stopped - the cars motor normalized and for a while we drove on into the darkness. This was certainly out of the ordinary for such a new vehicle - suffice it to say that it never happened before nor since. By this time, we were fairly spooked and ready to go back - this wasn't like TV.
I tried not to panic
There was no screen between us and whatever strange force lives along the sides of these lonely desolate roads. Suddenly the idea of the car shutting off and being marooned out there in the dark seemed quite intimidating. It hadn't occurred to me that a ghost had such psychic energy, but then again, I was on the side of a huge mountain. A strange place devoid of people, and mysterious even to the Indians.
Thoughts of the many legends I'd heard of disappearing hikers and tourists came to mind - as I fought them back and focused on my driving. Not realizing that I had begun to exceed the speed limit, as my new Impala took the tight turns - almost too easily - the markers in the rode flipping by in a blur... on into the darkness we drove, a new sobriety taking hold.To break the silence, I played Nirvana until we passed the summit at Idyllwild and turned back. Wanting to really experience this moment, I switched the radio back off...
Let's Go Home
Fortunately, the ride was eventless the rest of the way up, and by this time we had had enough.
Indeed, summitting a mountain in the darkness is enough to get a "city slicker" spooked, let alone the driving through the intense darkness, along a huge abyss like drop offs along this length of road (growing up I'd seen many broken vehicles at the bottom of these cliffs over the years and knew just how lethal they can be).Suddenly at least one reason for the Highways reputation dawned on me on me - why this may truly bea highway of death!
It is a common occurrence for people to drive right off the side of the road up here. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Highway 74 runs some of through the most treacherous landscapes Southern California has to offer.
But now it was time to go home.
As we turned to head back down the mountain, we felt our ears popping from the altitude, but also something else! It was as if there was some heaviness in the air, a buildup of pressure upon our senses, and once again the car began to struggle and sputter! As if something was draining the energy out of it.
And then it went away.
We descended far rapidly than we ascended, the curves flew by, and the Impala handled so well that I was confident to go even faster than the speed limit (which is at an advisable 35pm). By this time the music was off, and we drove in silence as I attempted to concentrate and then it happened - about a quarter of the way down I heard the first voice:
"Slow down!"
I doubted myself for a moment...But I clearly heard a man call out from the side of the road and say:"Slow down!".My flesh became goosebumps, as I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck - and of course, I thought I had imagined it!So, for a moment we rode on, the silence seeming to have a weight of its own.Into the dark we drove, not altering speed, going just above the limit, and then I head the second voice, a woman:"You're going too fast!"I slowed down.The speedometer decreased speed from around 45mph to 30 mph.I turned to my wife and said, did you hear it?She turned to me, her face stark, and shook her head "yes".I slowed down. And mumbled:"This is what happens when you turn your music off out here", popped the car stereo back on and kept it easy all the way back down the dark mountain.
Conclusion
If you are wondering, I now have a clearer idea of why the State Route Highway 74 is nicknamed "The Highway of Death":
- It covers a huge expanse of semi remote territory that is extremely dark at night, and excessively hot in the day.
- This territory has historic roots in colonization, and territory disputes where frontier justice was the norm until the early 20th century - possibly the root of the legend itself as several battles, ambushes, and even massacres were fought along this route.
- It was some of the last of California territory to be properly policed after pacification and even today has huge crime problems.
- It winds through treacherous mountain passes that are dangerous even under the best driving conditions.
- It is a route along which many immigrants perished attempting to walk from Mexico in search of work in the farms, ranches, fields and dairies which covered the land in the mid 1900's.
- It winds through at least two Indian reservations
- Historically people have perished along its route for many, many reasons some of whom are still unknown.
- To this day many people come up missing in the wilderness which it crosses and are never seen again
- Recent media reports of odd paranormal activity include sightings of a ghostly clown standing along the road, UFO's and phantom hitchhikers.
I Wonder...
I often wonder why this happened out there that night? Why did it happen and what did it mean?
Surely the history has something to do with it, as vast amounts of people have perished particularly in the mountainous area of this route, but there was a bit more to that night.
After many years of reflection, I believe that my intentions of going out into the wilderness along this highway somehow connected me to presences which live along this road.
Maybe they were people that themselves died along the road, or maybe it was something else, something even more strange. Because of the sound and accents of the voices I always thought it may have been people from the time of the region's settlement.
They sounded like "country" or "cowboy" era people, although maybe they were modern spirits... or guardians of some type.
In the end I found that you don't need a ghost box to interact with a ghost, just the intention, and location may be enough. I also found that once a paranormal experience begins, it may continue with increasing intensity for some time but most of all I now know that we may be done with the past, but the past is not done with us.
In my case this was true, and I would be back, drawn to the mountain like a planet to its sun, I needed to know more and soon I would.
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