Highway 299: Blue Lake to Shasta

Highway 299 is the long way across the mountains from Humboldt Bay to the Sacramento Valley, and the stretch from Blue Lake to Redding is the Trinity Scenic Byway, a National Forest Scenic Byway since 1991. The drive starts where the freeway out of Arcata ends, in Blue Lake, and climbs over Berry Summit before dropping to Willow Creek on the Trinity River.

From Willow Creek the road follows the Trinity upstream past Salyer, Hawkins Bar, Burnt Ranch, Big Bar, Helena and Junction City. In Weaverville, the Trinity County seat, the highway becomes Main Street and passes the Joss House, the oldest Chinese temple in continuous use in California, completed in 1874.

East of Weaverville the road leaves the river, crosses Buckhorn Summit at the Trinity and Shasta county line, and comes down along the north shore of Whiskeytown Lake. It ends at Shasta, six miles west of Redding, where a row of half-ruined brick buildings is what's left of the Gold Rush town once called the Queen City of the northern mines.