Commentary: Highway bandits, Charles Lindbergh and the 700 curves; The story of the Ridge Route over Tejon Pass

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Set us as preferred What comes before 5?Trick question.It’s not a number.

The 5 I mean is Interstate 5, the massive road that muscles up and over the 4,160-foot Tejon Pass, connecting two parts of California so distinct from each other — Southern and Central California — that to this day there’s a lot of yakking about splitting the state up there, like a magician’s woman-in-a-box trick, severing us not with a crosscut saw but with a line on a map.How, before the 5 was completed in 1970, did they do it? How did trucks and tourists and Californians manage the uphills and downhills among inclines and ridges that could be windy or icy or foggy, sometimes all at once? The Tejon Pass isn’t nearly as tall as its grander sister mountain ranges, but no one has to haul a big rig loaded up with peaches over Mt.Baldy or Mt.

Whitney.As you’re motoring away on your time off this summer, perhaps even driving over that very “Grapevine” on the I-5, here’s some backstory drama for you to take along in the passenger seat.That route has had many historic incarnations, but in the early automobile age, before the I-5, there were two successive ones, each called the Ridge Route.The first one was finished in 1915, and it was one scary ride, crazy as a Mobius strip, with 697 curves in its 36 miles.You can do the arithmetic: about 20 curves per mile, speed limit 15 mph.

The views were spectacular, if you had the guts to swerve your eyes from the white-knuckling road.Only part of the original is open today but rarely and usually just to local traffic and occasional antique car clubs.

Los Angeles is a complex place.Luckily, there's someone who can provide context, history and culture.

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