.Lost Highways: Back Before Freeways Ruined Everything

From a Zen perspective, all San Jose phenomena are subject to change, decay and death. This is especially true with lost highways.

To begin this week’s journey just off Gish Road, I scoped out the crossroads of Kings Row and Industrial Avenue. Unlike any other San Jose intersection, it just sounded gritty, regal, philosophical and historic all at once. The street signs were green. Four years ago, they were black.

This area featured all the heavy industry an urban traveler wanted: Aromatic recycling centers. Auto dismantlers. Ramshackle upholstery businesses. Food-truck repair warehouses. Crows feasting on trash heaps. Discarded refrigerators in the middle of the street. A forklift graveyard.

A century ago, before freeways ruined everything, Gish was one continuous street. Hedding Street between First Street and Coyote Creek was the northern city limits, although it was called Rosa Street.

In this part of town, the temporal landscape merged with the spatial landscape in fascinating ways. I immediately discovered, on both sides of 101, a century’s worth of dead-end streets and pockets of neighborhoods leftover from before 101 existed, plus thriving industrial commerce and chunks of residential all on the same blocks. North of 101, forgotten pieces of 13th Street and 15th Street appeared, where downtrodden RVs occupied most of the block. South of 101, forgotten chunks of 11th Street and 12th Street likewise came into view.

At this point, I knew one of those goofy Habbas Law billboards would materialize far off in the distance, atop the horizon, if I just looked for it. I was right. There it was. Wherever one goes in San Jose, there will always be a convoy of RVs decaying on a side street and a Habbas Law billboard somewhere.

Yet however one navigates this part of town, the sun-cracked stretch of Old Bayshore Highway becomes a necessity. You can almost hear Hank Williams as you roll along what’s left of the sidewalk.

Long before the freeway system emerged, 101 was a two-lane road in this part of town, and then a four-lane road called the 101 Bypass, back when the other 101 was El Camino. In those days, Brokaw went all the way through the airport to Santa Clara, Highway 880 did not yet exist, and Highway 17 came up Bascom, which was then called San Jose-Los Gatos Road. A street route at the time, 17 turned on San Carlos, then Race, then The Alameda to Santa Clara Street and finally 13th Street all the way northward to become what’s now Oakland Road. Are you following me? Good, because every San Jose street is subject to change, decay and death.

Speaking of decay, this stretch of Old Bayshore, I’m guessing, is one of the last stretches of the old 101. It now runs through the 101-880-Gish-10th Street disaster, then continues alongside 101 before it flows into one of the leftover pieces of Commercial Street. Accumulations of trash highlight the fence separating the road from the current 101 below. Piles of glass, plastic and other debris left over from decades of car crashes are ground into the gutters.

The other leftover piece of Commercial Street is now a separate road on the other side of 101, between 4th and 10th streets. It used to be a continuous street. This is where old maps come in handy. They help us understand just how the civic landscape has been created, destroyed and reassembled over the last 100 years. Old maps reveal the janky piecemeal way in which these neighborhoods have evolved. Or devolved, depending on your perspective.

As I spent more time in this neighborhood, the chain of karmic momentum placed me at a perfect final destination for this column—the fabulous Cambodian restaurant Chez Sovan on Oakland Road, which used to be Old Oakland Road, aka the original Highway 17. 

Chez Sovan is a red building these days. It used to be blue. Twenty years ago, it was grayish-white. I was glad to see it still there. 

Unfortunately, someday even Chez Sovan might disappear from the scene. I am fine with this. Once I accepted that all San Jose phenomena were subject to change, decay and death, I no longer suffered like Hank Williams. I was home.