By Roger Phelps
Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part series.It's as stirring a view over a classic Sierra Nevada river canyon as is likely to be encountered.
What's equally notable about the view, however, is how few people encounter it.
Ponderosa Way, a decades old public right-of way cut as a federal fire-break "truck trail" in the nation's run-up to World War II, crosses the North Fork of the Mokelumne River from Amador into Calaveras county. But people no longer cross, at least not from the Amador side.
In Calaveras County, Ponderosa Way never passed out of public hands. A simple fate, no quirks.
Just the opposite in Amador.
Ponderosa apparently was privatized in Amador by 1975 or even earlier, according to county records of an offer of right-of-way by subdivider Helen Mangiantini. However, no sign saying, "Private road" stands on Ponderosa Way where it departs Tabeaud Road near Pine Grove, eventually to descend to the North Fork.
What does stand at Tabeaud is a 4-foot-square, black-on-white sign reading, "Road closed 1 mile ahead - no turnaround." Dozens of interviews could fix no origin for the sign.
"It (Ponderosa down to the river) has been shut quite a while - I seem to recall some controversy over the bridge being not safe," said Brian Saleen, Amador County planning inspector. "But I couldn't tell you on the sign."
Irregularities abound. The only "private road" sign that is evident stands more than half a mile above Tabeaud Road, at the ridgetop, past the Mangiantini subdivision, apparently installed by a pair of landowners downhill toward the river. However, each of those parcels extends only to the road's center line, and county records show they don't lie right across from one another.
From the ridgetop, one technically doesn't re-encounter private right-of-way until one hits a gate installed around 1990. There, a private 400-acre parcel crosses the right-of-way. Guess what? The gate does not display a "no trespassing" sign.
Jim Eicher, an associate field manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management - Ponderosa Way's original owner - around five years drove Ponderosa to the North Fork from the Calaveras side, crossed a decades-old, federally installed bridge into Amador County and continued uphill toward the top of Tabeaud Ridge. He said he was surprised to be stopped by the gate.
"It's kind of perplexing," Eicher said. "I was shocked that it was not a continuous road."
Why dissimilar fates befell the two stretches of Ponderosa Way lying on either side of the Mokelumne is not known.
Taking an educated guess, Fire Capt. Chris Waters of CAL FIRE noted that the North Fork separates two administrative "regions" within the state fire agency.
"The Mokelumne separates the Northern and Southern regions," Waters said. "There is administrative latitude between the regions."
Why the gating-off of the route to members of the public?
The answer lies in decades of serious criminal behavior on and near the route - by members of the public, at least most of them likely to have been Amador County residents.
The anti-social actions included the following:
- torching of the decades-old, federally installed bridge spanning the North Fork
- continued and extensive poaching of cattle on the Amador side
- garbage dumping on the Amador side
- destruction by gunfire of a publicly installed portable toilet and parking sign on the Calaveras side
- massive littering with beer bottles and shotguns shells on the Calaveras side
- ruining of roadway surface by four-wheel-drive tires in winter on both Amador and Calaveras sides.
According to landowner Carole Cuneo Marz, her mother, Margaret Cuneo, requested a gate to be installed by the state fire agency at the top of the 400-acre private parcel that crosses the road. Marz and her cousin Jim Cuneo recall it as being sometime around 1990.
Marz said, "They shot them (with guns) and killed them with bows and arrows. It was pretty distressing to go down there and see entrails strung along the ground."
Amador County sheriff's deputies took reports and, Marz said, did what they could, but could not track down the poachers.
But even Marz can't account for the four-by-four sign at Tabeaud Road
"I have no clue about the sign at Tabeaud," she said.
Next time: Part 3, to run Oct. 9, will examine Ponderosa Way from a perspective of the future, including the case for work toward restoring some form of public access.
