Talk:California State Route 49

49 number representing 1849 needs verification

It's logical that Route 49 was named for the year 1849, especially considering the route's formal name as listed in the article. However, there's no verification. I've looked at various webpages, including an article on WP itself, and many imply this but don't back it up with anything that could be considered a RS. For example, from the Route 49 page on California Highways, a SPS but useful, near the bottom of the section on the third route segment, it states "[Archie Stevenot] was also the founder of the 'Mother Lode Association' in 1919, which was the first highway association and promoted the assignment of the number '49' to Route 49." (This text verbatim also appears here; I assume that the latter instance was lifted from the former.) Now, even if that were acceptable to use, which it isn't due to the SPS status, you'd still have to verify Caltrans' predecessor accepted this persuasion per documentation in roughly 1934 and that it specifically correlated the number 49 to the year 1849. Mapsax (talk) 01:50, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Although it does not explicitly state SR 49 is numbered for the 49ers, this article [1] (page 15-20), by a bridge engineer detailing the challenges of building several such structures along SR 49, comes darn close. It mentions SR 49, the path of the 49ers and gold rush country in the same sentence several times. Fully granted, none of the sources currently used in this article explicitly state the number 49 was chosen deliberately. However, just given the fact that the highway was created and heavily lobbied for by people dedicated to preserving the history of the 49ers, in the territory and along the paths used by the 49ers, succeeded in convincing the relevant authorities to construct the highway (and nobody disputes these facts, all well sourced), simple logic dictates that it is far more likely intentional than co-incidence that said highway is numbered 49 today. In fact, I'd be more likely to challenge with a [CN] template if someone claimed it was co-incidental. Curiously enough while searching CA Highways magazine for the above article, I did find another article that explicitly stated the shape of CA's route shield is a miners spade to honor the 49ers. I was disappointed that article didn't mention Route 49. Lastly two minor correction, the hmdb.org site can be used. The site may be SPS, but that text is copied from the plaque pictured, which was written by a historical society. Second, as route numbers in California are assigned by the legislature and codified into law, the actual path to prove it is that while the planners of route 49 were asking the legislature for funding, they also suggested the number.Dave (talk) 05:06, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Not that I've been looking full time, but I still haven't found anything that explicitly states the conection. So I guess if nothing is found in a couple of days, we do what all the sources on the subject so far found do, say Route 49 traverses the path of the 49ers without explicitly stating the connection. Dave (talk) 06:37, 14 January 2023 (UTC)