Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937. The Ridge Route is a narrow two-lane highway in the northern Greater Los Angeles area that winds over the San Gabriel and Tehachapi Mountains between Castaic Junction on the south and extends to the bottom of Grapevine Grade on the north where I-5 enters the great San Joaquin Valley. It was opened in 1915 and paved with concrete from 1917 to 1921, making it the first paved highway directly linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley over the Tejon Pass and the rugged ridge south of Gorman. In 1930, a new three-lane highway, the Newhall Alternate, was built through Weldon and Gavin Canyons bypassing Newhall and Saugus entirely. In 1931, construction began on a three-lane highway over the Liebre Mountains, just north of Castaic, bypassing the treacherous curves and grades over the Ridge Route. On October 29, 1933, U.S. Route 99 (or just US 99), known as the Ridge Route Alternate, was opened over the Liebre Mountains; by 1936, all of the Ridge Route had been replaced over the mountains. In 1970, the Ridge Route Alternate was upgraded to a modern 8-lane freeway, Interstate 5. Currently, the stretch of Old Ridge Route that remains is roughly 21 miles long, and in several locations, looks down onto Interstate 5, though the northern end of the route is buried underneath the I-5. Southerly view of cars driving by several billboards in Galvin Canyon on the Weldon-Gavin Canyons section of U.S. Route 99 between Castiac Junction and San Fernando. The back of a billboard is visible in the foreground showing the wooden support structure and further away a billboard advertises the Chancellor Hotel.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
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