# The Ebbetts Pass Byway

Source page: https://carsonriverresorts.com/explore/ebbetts-pass-byway

At the gate · The byway's eastern end

Highway 4 and Highway 89 together make the Ebbetts Pass National Scenic Byway — sixty-one miles from Arnold in Calaveras County over an eight-thousand-foot pass and down into Markleeville. The resort is on the eastern end of it, and the byway's own guide names this stretch of the East Fork as one of its points of interest.

## What it is

A National Scenic Byway is a road the federal government has decided is
worth driving for its own sake. Ebbetts Pass became a **California State
Scenic Highway in 1971** and a **National Scenic Byway on September 22,
2005**, and the designation covers sixty-one miles of Highways 4 and 89
between Arnold and Markleeville.

It is bookended by state parks — Calaveras Big Trees at the western end,
Grover Hot Springs at ours — and in between it crosses two national
forests, brushes two wilderness areas (Carson-Iceberg and Mokelumne),
and is itself crossed by the Pacific Crest Trail.

## The eastern end is out the door

The resort sits on Highway 89 at the byway's Alpine County end. The
byway's guide lists **the East Fork Carson River** among its points of
interest, describes it as one of only two major free-flowing rivers on
the eastern Sierra, and names this resort as somewhere to stay on the
drive — camping, housekeeping cabins and provisions.

The reach it means is the one out front. Ten and a bit miles of it, from
Hangman's Bridge south past Markleeville, carry a **scenic** designation
under the California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and it holds pure-strain
Lahontan cutthroat. The gorge below the bridge was cut by an eighteen-mile
glacier off Sonora Peak, and there are lava-tube caves on its west side.

## Driving it

From the gate, west on 4 is the climb: the road narrows as it goes and
runs **twenty-three miles with no center line at all**, topping out at
**8,730 feet** at Ebbetts Pass. It is a summer road. The gate closes the
high section from roughly December to May, and storms shut it
intermittently at either end of the season — the byway posts current
conditions, and so do we.

Two hours will get you over the top and down to Bear Valley. A day will
get you to the big trees at Arnold and back, which is the whole byway,
end to end and returned.

## The byway's own guide

The **Ebbetts Pass Scenic Byway Association** is a non-profit that keeps
the guide to all of it — thirty-eight points of interest, current road
status, and the history of the crossing. It is better than anything we
could write about the western sixty miles, and it is where to look before
you drive it.

- [The byway's guide](https://scenic4.org/) — Ebbetts Pass Scenic Byway Association
- [Their page on the East Fork Carson River](https://scenic4.org/the-route/points-of-interest/east-fork-carson-river/) — the point of interest at our end, and where they list the resort

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Carson River Resort · 12399 Highway 89, Markleeville, CA 96120 · (530) 694-2229 · store open 8am to 6pm, every day.
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