HWY 1 – NORTHBOUND

DATE: 10/07/09 – 10/08/09

TIME: 7:00 AM – 4:00 PM

LOCATION: BIXBY CREEK BRIDGE

ONE-WAY TRAFFIC CONTROL – 0 to 15 MINUTE DELAY

BRIDGE REPAIR

Gladstone’s in Malibu benefits from a makeover in both style and menu offerings, so reports an article from the Los Angeles Times.  ”The Pacific Coast Highway location is Southern California’s highest-grossing independent restaurant, with annual revenue topping $14 million, according to Restaurants & Institutions, an industry trade journal. But sales and profits have slid in recent years as the restaurant has fallen victim to the recession and changing consumer tastes, (Richard) Riordan said.”

$14 million dollars?  That’s a lot of dining!  Gladstone’s location, “Where Sunset Boulevard meets Pacific Coast Highway,” might be part of the reason for its success.  On weekends, the Pacific Coast Highway, (and here I refer to the Coast Road in its entirety as PCH and California SR 1), is a dining destination for weekend wanderers wanting a sight for sore eyes and pleasing food and drink.

That $14 million dollar quote got my attention and I reflected on all the fine dining opportunities that I’ve enjoyed during my lifetime on the California coast.  I also think about the many times I’ve been stopped by tourists who ask, “Where’s a good place to eat around here?”  Fine dining in this post is not to be defined as expensive, formal and dressy, instead, “fine dining” is used as the qualifier to describe simply a good place to eat.

Passive pensive scene with Palos Verdes at the horizon. Seemingly sublime, no?

Harry Mattull paints this seaview from Palisades Park – a popular park precariously placed atop an impermanent bluff, overlying a gully-riddled, hollowed-out badland, caused by wind and water erosion on a steep clay and sandy slope.

Notice how the artist paints out the Coast Boulevard?  Romantic.

An early 20th century wasteland at the beach bejeweled by black Southern Pacific railroad tracks leading towards the wharf and a skinny sandy road for the newly popular automobile.

The Coast Boulevard was built over the tracks and road, and then enlarged to 2 to 4 to now 6 lanes below this ancient sand dune and river plain.  The beach widened and replinished with sand so that tourism to the beaches became an economy for Los Angeles.

Happy 159th California!

Old Town, San Diego - Sketch by H.M.T. Powell

Louise Nelson Dyble’s recently published Paying The Toll – Local Power, Regional Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge is a rich compendium of Golden Gate Bridge history.

So rich in the amount of information, that I’ve held off mentioning this book as a blog post because I figured all of you have been on summer vacation and are too busy reading your sci-fi and romance novels. Now that it’s Back-to-School time of year, it’s time to return to serious reading. Make room for this one in your book queue.

Published by the University of Pennsylvania press, “…this is the story of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, the government agency that grew into an empire in the shadow of the bridge.”

Louise writes in her introduction, “Agency Run Amok,” “Many San Francisco Bay Area residents expected that bridge tolls would finally be eliminated and the bridge incorporated into the state highway system, as campaign publicity promoting the bonds suggested in 1930.”

Today’s toll to cross southbound on the Golden Gate Bridge is $6 cash and $5 FasTrak.  For comparison, the Bay Bridge toll is currently $4, whether that be cash or FasTrak.  (The Bay Bridge carries 270,000 vehicles a day, on average, while the Golden Gate Bridge reports 110,000.)

Mr. Roadshow of the San Jose Mercury News writes about the construction status of Devil’s Slide Tunnel.

“Workers have drilled into and blown away mostly solid rock, which they prefer over soft, crumbling rock because it is easier to blast away neatly. They are tunneling about 15 feet a day, and they are almost two-thirds of the way through the mountain.”

Mr. Roadshow concludes, “When these tunnels are finished at last, we’ll have a lot less to be wary about.”

With regards to no longer driving the drop-down roadbed of the roller coaster ride that Highway 1 currently provides at Devil’s Slide, yes; however, I anticipate traffic to increase north and south along Highway 1 once the tunnels are complete and open.  The coast is somewhat protected from the mass-weekend tourist traffic by the precarious passage of Devil’s Slide.  Once the tunnels open and ease the drive, we will see many more visitors, property values will increase, and the isolation that the community once experienced will vanish, forever.

If you are interested in reading more about this project, visit CalTrans’ District 4 Devil’s Slide Project page.  An excellent chronicle is Eric Rice’s 3-part series on how the project came to be, or purchase Barbara VanderWerf’s book on the history of the route over Montara Mountain.