Sierra Heritage Scenic Byway (Route 168) 168

Sierra Heritage Scenic Byway is a California drive on Route 168, climbing from Clovis and Fresno up the Sierra Nevada's western slope to Huntington Lake. The route begins near the junction of State Routes 41 and 180 in Fresno and climbs steadily east through foothill and forest country to the lake itself, a reservoir that didn't exist before the early 1900s, when Southern California Edison's Big Creek Hydroelectric Project dammed the area, then known simply as Basin, a cattle-grazing valley, to create what became known as the Edison Lakes. On the lake's shore, the Billy Creek Guard Station Museum covers that hydroelectric history alongside the area's Native American heritage. A stranger footnote lies at the bottom of the lake itself: a World War II-era B-24 bomber that crashed there in December 1943 during a training flight, after its pilot apparently mistook the lake's frozen, snow-covered surface for a flat meadow and attempted a landing when the plane lost hydraulic power in a storm. Today the byway is a popular escape from the Central Valley heat, climbing from Fresno's summer swelter into pine forest and alpine lake country in under two hours.

• Fresno/Clovis to Huntington Lake (Route 168)
• Big Creek Hydroelectric Project (Edison Lakes)
• Billy Creek Guard Station Museum
• WWII B-24 crash (Dec 1943)
• Sierra Nevada western slope
• formerly called "Basin"