Traveling the Trinity Highway by historian Jerry Rhode and collaborating university professor and students is interspersed with maps and historical photographs. This work is part guidebook and part history with a fun sprinkling of reminiscences, legends and glimpses of wildlife and geography. It takes the reader along Highway 299 from Redding in the central valley to the Pacific coast as it leisurely explores towns and the natural settings and legends in between.

       It begins by presenting the route from its rough gold rush trails, to early wagon tracks and finally to the many stages of road construction. Then we go even further back to present the many native tribes that inhabited this territory where "nowhere else on the continent did so many tribes inhabit such a small space and, possibly, was life so generous and so secure."  The eight tribes living directly along what became Highway 299 are explored in more detail, their ways of life and their transforming confrontations with the Euro-Americans.

       Another chapter goes into the varied natural settings and vegetation along the route, while others explore the Trinity River itself: its fish and wildlife, its geology, seasonal changes and the mining that took place along the river and reshaped it.  Other chapters focus on individual settlements: Redding, Shasta, Whiskey Town, French Gulch, Lewiston, Douglas City, Weaverville, Junction City, Big Flat, Big Bar, Del Loma, China Slide, Helena, Burnt Ranch, Salyer, Willow Creek. Denny, Blue Lake, Korbel, and finally the Pacific coast with Arcata and Eureka and even an Old Town architectural tour.

       This is not an aloof travel guide.  Each place and stage is enlivened with entrancing anecdotes and historical instances such as dramatic crimes, the colorful lives of early settlers, recipes, conflicts with Native Americans and then Chinese immigrants, and tales of Bigfoot. Interspersed are side trips to places of interest such as lakes and the Hoopa Valley. The book ends with pages of color photos of the current region and its people.

       This book is not so much a place-to- place guide as a leisurely road trip. This is good for the tourist, but it is also a warm look at our greater community, past and present.  And its enough to make us want to hop in the car and visit these places ourselves - or at least to sit comfortably on the sofa and vicariously experience this scenic road trip.

This copy is in good condition. Slight damage to the cover edges, but the pages are clean and unmarked. Published in 2000, out of print.