Residents of Tecopa, Shoshone and businesses across the area rejoiced at the news that came in over email from Caltrans late last Friday evening: State Route 127 to Baker has a reopening date: December 4.
The date is still technically tentative, as weather could still postpone it. The opening is also a partial one – a 24 hour flagging operation will be in place piloting traffic in each direction. Wait times are expected to be about 30-40 minutes.
Still, that beats the more than two hours of added drive time between Tecopa and Los Angeles that required driving nearly all the way to the Las Vegas airport to connect between Route 160 and Interstate 15.
From the Caltrans District 8 Commuter Alert:
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) continues $28.1M emergency work on State Route 127 (SR-127) to repair roadbed, pavement, backfill shoulders, armor erosion embankments, repair drainage, remove debris and address other structural damage sustained by recent monsoon storms.
Contractor crews are in the area clearing debris, performing roadbed repair, drainage repair and various other recovery efforts. On Monday, December 4 the route will be re-opened with flagging operations in place from Monday through Sunday. This is a 24-hour flagging operation, with piloting to direct traffic in both directions.
Flagging operations will continue as needed due to severe undermined roadways and to allow for environmental mitigation operations to continue. The repair work is expected to continue through early spring 2024. The re-opening and repair timeline is weather and material dependent.
Crews will be on location performing base paving to allow for traffic flagging with escorts in place. Please adhere to all road signage and operations and wait for the piloting vehicle to direct your route. Expect traffic delays, flagging may take up to 30-40 minutes per direction. This is a 24-hour flagging operation from Monday through Sunday. All traffic will be provided access through SR-127 from Baker to Tecopa via escorting only.
The road provides the most direct route between Tecopa and Los Angeles, connecting Interstate 15 to Shoshone and beyond to the east side of Death Valley National Park. Powerful summer rain storms, including Tropical Storm Hilary, had previously destroyed the road. It has been closed since September.
The closure has had a deep economic impact on the Tecopa and Shoshone communities. Some business owners did not realize how many of their customers had been coming from the Los Angeles area until it evaporated right at the beginning of the high tourist season.
The New Yorker described the drive from Baker to Shoshone in 2022:
“Next services 57 miles” reads a sign at the southern end of California State Route 127, which goes from the Mojave Desert town of Baker up to the Nevada border, skirting the edge of Death Valley National Park. It’s one of those two-lane desert roads that slices across the landscape like a never-ending airport runway. There’s an extended stretch that consists of a long downward slope followed by an equally long ascent. If you’re driving at night, the headlights of cars coming in the opposite direction float above one another in midair, like planes waiting to land. But cars are infrequent. For mile after mile, there are no services, no homes.
That was from a profile of Susan Sorrells, owner of the village of Shoshone, who wrote of the road re-opening on Facebook, “CA State Hwy 127 will open Dec 4th to a large extent as the result of the community’s voice! Thanks everyone and a big thanks to our supervisor, Matt Kingsley!”
Though a friend commented in response, “Awesome! Just in time for more rain.”
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