Traveling the Highways & Byways with Bill Graves Lompoc, California T his fabled highway runs up the California coast, at times right at the ocean’s edge. It passes by Los Angeles and San Francisco almost unnoticed. Then in towns like Newport Beach, Malibu and Corona DelMar, it is the main street.
Officially called Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway was built when America’s cars first needed roads to run on, a need that still determines how wide it gets. Where traffic has mandated its expansion, its personality as a twolane scenic byway disappear, and its highway number becomes an also ran. For example, once out of the Los Angeles maze, the northbound Coast Highway temporarily becomes U.S. 101, the first superhighway to San Francisco.
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Beyond Santa Barbara at Gaviota, U.S. 101 heads north and Highway 1 gets back its identity and takes off on its own. It swings inland for about 55 miles, leaving ocean-view, coastal travel exclusively to Amtrak passengers on the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Highway 1 joins the ocean again at Grover City and Pismo Beach. On this inland passage, the Coast Highway cuts across Vandenberg Air Force Base. This space flight and missile facility covers about 100,000 acres, which includes 30 miles of raw coastline. Vandenberg is the largest piece of oceanfront property on the West Coast – probably the whole country – that is pretty much as it has always been. Part of the Pacific Missile Range, this expanse of land, which is bigger than many European countries, is more a physical barrier than anything.
