SR 1 has become famous worldwide, Construction of the
Southern Pacific Coast Line railroad had created a road flanked by
riprap along this area. In order to make this part of the first coastal route for motorists driving from
San Francisco to
Los Angeles, they paved the road and built wooden causeways where the route flooded from the ocean waves. Local funding ran out, but the newly formed State Highway Commission took over and completed the road in 1913. One of the most difficult routes to build was along the
Big Sur coast. The state first approved building Route 56, or the Carmel-San Simeon Highway, to connect Big Sur to the rest of California in 1919. Federal funds were appropriated and in 1921 voters approved additional state funds.
San Quentin State Prison set up three temporary prison camps to provide unskilled
convict labor to help with road construction. One was set up by
Little Sur River, one at Kirk Creek and a third was later established in the south at
Anderson Creek. Inmates were paid 35 cents per day and had their prison sentences reduced in return. The route necessitated construction of 33 bridges, the largest of which was the
Bixby Bridge. Six more concrete arch bridges were built between Point Sur and Carmel. After 18 years of construction, aided by
New Deal funds during the
Great Depression, the paved two-lane road was completed and opened on June 17, 1937. The road was initially called the Carmel-San Simeon Highway (Route 56), but was better known as the Roosevelt Highway, honoring the current President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. A 1921 law extended Route 56 south over the county road to
Cambria. Route 60, from
Oxnard via the coast to
San Juan Capistrano, was extended from Oxnard to
El Rio (midway to Ventura, now the site of the Oxnard Boulevard interchange with
US 101), in 1925. At
Point Mugu, a path for the highway was cut through the mountains using surplus World War I explosives, thus creating Mugu Rock. The 1921 legislation, in theory, made Route 60 a continuous coastal loop, with both ends at what became
US 101 in Oxnard and at Capistrano Beach (since 1964 the southern terminus of SR 1 at
Interstate 5 in Orange County). Route 56 was extended further south from Cambria to connect to present-day US 101 in
San Luis Obispo in 1931. The route from
San Simeon to
Carmel (connecting with existing
county highways at each end) was one of two sections designated as SR 1. It and Route 60 were intended as links in a continuous coastal roadway from
Oregon to
Mexico, A large expansion of the state highway system in 1933 resulted in Route 56 being extended in both directions. To the south, a second section was added, beginning at
Pismo Beach on US 101 (Route 2) and heading south through
Guadalupe and
Lompoc to rejoin US 101 at a junction called Los Cruces (sic), just north of Gaviota Pass. (A short piece near
Orcutt and Los Alamos had been part of Route 2, which originally followed present
SR 135 from Los Alamos to Santa Maria.) To the north, Route 56 was continued along the coast from Carmel through
Santa Cruz to
San Francisco. Several discontinuous pieces were added north of San Francisco, one from Route 1 (US 101) north of the
Golden Gate to the county line near
Valley Ford, another from the
Russian River near
Jenner (where the new
Route 104 ended) to
Westport, and a third from
Ferndale to Route 1 near
Fernbridge. Except for the gaps in Route 56 north of San Francisco, these additions completed the coastal highway, with other sections formed by Routes 1, 2, and
71. The section of SR 1 from Santa Monica to Oxnard, via Malibu, went out to contract in 1925 as "Coast Boulevard", but was designated "Theodore Roosevelt Highway" when it was dedicated in 1929. Before the completion of its present alignment in 1937, a narrow, winding, steep road known as
Pedro Mountain Road connected
Montara with Pacifica. That highway was completed in 1914 and provided competition to the
Ocean Shore Railroad, which operated between San Francisco and
Tunitas Creek from 1907 to 1920. SR 1 also used to run along the coast between Pacifica and Daly City, but this segment was damaged and rendered unusable after
a 5.3 magnitude earthquake on March 22, 1957. A small stub remains near
Thornton Beach. Route 56 along Big Sur was incorporated into the state highway system and re-designated as SR 1 in 1939. The section of road along the Big Sur Coast was declared the first State Scenic Highway in 1965, and in 1966 the first lady,
Lady Bird Johnson, led the official designation ceremony at
Bixby Bridge. The route was designated as an All American Road by the US Government. The SR 3 signs were replaced by US 101 Alt. shields by 1936, as the road was built out; this change also allowed the extension of
US 66 to end at another U.S. Route, in Santa Monica. The gaps of non-state highway along the northern coast were finally filled in by the Legislature in 1951, though the
State Department of Public Works was not required to maintain the newly added portions immediately. A connection from near Rockport to Legislative Route 1 (signed US 101) at
Leggett was also added to the Legislative Route 56 definition, as the existing county road north from Rockport to Ferndale had not yet been
paved. A portion of the road heading to the Golden Gate Bridge was widened to four lanes as part of a project competed in 1954. The state Legislature in 1963 tossed out the old conflicting Legislative Route Numbers (
1964 renumbering), got rid of some famous old U.S. routes, and renumbered many state highways. It abolished US 101A in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties and renumbered it as SR 1. The Rockport to Leggett connection then became State Route 208. The cover of
California Highways magazine for in early 1964 shows state engineers posting the new shield at Point Mugu. The same year, the Legislature by state law named SR 1 "Pacific Coast Highway" in Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, "Cabrillo Highway" from Santa Barbara north to San Francisco, and "Shoreline Highway" from Marin County to its northern terminus. Many cities, however, did not change the name of city streets that are part of SR 1, such as Lincoln and Sepulveda boulevards in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and El Segundo; and Junipero Serra and Park Presidio boulevards in San Francisco. Several other cities and communities like Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Bodega Bay merely named their respective city streets as "Coast Highway".
Modern alignments The freeway portion of SR 1 from Highway 68 in Monterey to Munras Avenue opened in 1956–1960. The segment from Munras Avenue to the northern border of Sand City and Seaside opened in 1968, and bypasses the original highway alignment of Munras Avenue and Fremont Street in Monterey, and Fremont Boulevard through Seaside. North of Seaside, the freeway was built over the original SR 1 alignment through
Fort Ord in 1973. North of Fort Ord, SR 1 now veers to the left of the original alignment and bypasses Marina to the west. This segment including the interchange with
SR 156 and the short, 2-lane Castroville Bypass opened in 1976. Originally SR 1 followed the SR 156 alignment to the
SR 183 intersection in Castroville, then turned northwest, following the present-day SR 183 through Castroville before rejoining its existing alignment at the northern terminus of the Castroville Bypass. Plans to upgrade SR 1 to a freeway from its southern terminus all the way to Oxnard, including building an offshore causeway from the
Santa Monica Pier to
Topanga Canyon Boulevard south of Malibu, were ultimately killed by 1971 due to local opposition. In 1980, another section was added northwest of
Ventura near
Emma Wood State Beach, when several miles of the old two-lane alignment of
U.S. Route 101 were posted as SR 1 where the freeway had bypassed it in about 1960. Then in 1988, the segment from Purisima Road in Lompoc to SR 135 was re-routed from Harris Grade Road to the former County Route S20 so it could directly serve
Vandenberg Air Force Base. Construction to bridge the gap in the
Lost Coast region between Rockport and Ferndale was eventually abandoned. The steepness and related geotechnical challenges of the coastal mountains made this stretch of coastline too costly for highway builders to establish routes through the area. In 1984, SR 1 was then re-routed to replace State Highway 208, connecting Rockport and Leggett, while the segment between Ferndale and Fernbridge was renumbered as
State Highway 211. Most of the coastline in the area is now part of
Sinkyone Wilderness State Park and the
King Range National Conservation Area. The roadway along
Devil's Slide, south of
Pacifica, became the site of frequent deadly crashes and roadway-closing
landslides. Beginning in 1958,
Caltrans supported a plan to construct an inland bypass over
Montara Mountain as an alternate route, but was eventually opposed by community and environmental groups who supported a tunnel instead. After decades of legal disputes, the
Federal Highway Administration ordered Caltrans in 1995 to re-evaluate the proposed tunnel. Then on November 5, 1996, San Mateo County voters approved Measure T to change the county's official preference from the bypass to the tunnel. Ground eventually broke in 2005, and the
Tom Lantos Tunnels opened in April 2013. In 2014, two-way traffic was restored along the original PCH segment from Copper Lantern to Blue Lantern streets in the Dana Point city center after 25 years of one-way operation. During that period, only northbound traffic had flowed along this section of PCH while southbound traffic had been diverted onto the parallel Del Prado Avenue. SR 1 has never been planned to extend south into
San Diego, or north into
Crescent City, where I-5 (which replaced the US 101 designation and signage between Los Angeles and San Diego) and US 101 serve as the coastal highways in those areas, respectively.
As a cycling venue before the segment was bypassed one year later by the
Tom Lantos Tunnels For the
1932 Summer Olympics, the segment of the SR 1 between Oxnard and Santa Monica (then known as the Theodore Roosevelt Highway) hosted part of the
road cycling events. Portions of SR 1 have also hosted stages of the
Tour of California. ==Maintenance==