Until 1860, only a dangerous pack trail through the upper Sacramento River Canyon linked Oregon with California’s northern mines, while Yreka’s merchants and settlers sought a safer wagon road. After earlier efforts failed in the rugged terrain, the Upper Soda Springs-Pitt River Turnpike Company built 44 miles of road from Upper Soda Springs to Stone’s Pitt River Ferry. Elias Stone, born in Pittsford, N.Y., founded the company with his sons Norton, Willard, Lloyd, Marvin, and William, along with kinsmen Edwin Stone and Pembroke Murray. Using man and animal power and black powder, the builders carved the road along canyon walls and placed 21 log bridges above high-water marks. From Soda Springs the road followed the west bank by way of Dog Town and Hales Ferry, crossed east over the ridge to the McCloud River, and continued to the Pitt River and Stone’s Ferry, while another road led to Shasta. Fierce winter storms in 1860 washed out most of the road, and although the Stones rebuilt their toll road in 1861, torrential rain again flooded the canyon. The company endured low tolls, high repair costs, and legal problems until new owners took over in 1868. After 1870, freight teamsters, U.S. mails, and stage drivers favored Stone’s more direct road over competing routes. In the 1880s, the Central Pacific laid rails to Oregon on some of the old turnpike roadbeds, and the route later became the Pacific Highway, then U.S. 99, and in the 1960s Interstate 5. In 1862, geological survey leader William H. Brewer, traveling to Mount Shasta, called it “the most picturesque road I have ever traveled” and praised it as “pretty well engineered.”