These cliffs are located just west of Susanville and Highway 36 passes right over it, so the casual road traveller would not even be aware of it. There was a time one could pull off the highway and look over, but the highway department put up a barrier to discourage visitors. For those walking the Bizz Johnson Trail and look up at the cliffs, one will notice a tremendous amount of rock debris below the cliffs nearly all the way to river. That was not Mother Nature’s doing. In the summer of 1916 a state prison camp was established on the site occupied today by the California Division of Forestry. A tremendous amount of rock blasting had to be done between there and the city limits, which would be the new entrance into Susanville. All that blasted rock debris was pushed over the cliffs.
