CALIFORNIA HWY 139

State highway 139 went east out of Susanville into the rocky hills and up onto the high dessert of northeast California.   It was a 67 mile trip between Susanville to the Big Valley Ranger Station in the small town of Adin on the Modoc National Forest.  It was another 20 miles on forest roads through a mixed conifer forest to the Hilton Spike Camp Guard Station where I spent my first summer in 1969 working for the Forest Service on a fire crew.  On my days off I would drive back on Highway 139 to Susanville to visit friends where I was taking a two year forestry course at Lassen College under the GI Bill.   The scenery along this highway consisted of an arid landscape of stage brush and Juniper trees scattered across valleys and hills, mostly utilized as range land for cattle.   There were a few corrals and old barns along the highway with dirt roads leading off to remote ranches, some with gates closing them off  to the public.  Portion of the highway went along the arid east shore of Eagle Lake, the second largest natural lake in California.   The high point of this highway was the Willow Creek campground in the open pine forests of the Modoc National Forest.  One of the only houses along this highway was a white house known as the Willow Creek Guard Station just south of the campground, where a fire patrolman was stationed during the summer months.  The campground is still there, but the station house is gone now.    A few miles after this the highway descended into the Big Valley, an arid valley of cattle ranches with irrigated pastures and hay fields.  I remember very little traffic on this highway.   Sometimes it was like a journey you did not want to end or really cared if you ever arrived at your destination.