It just might be the end of the road for one of America’s most scenic drives.
California’s Pacific Coast Highway – also known as California State Route 1 – has been taking a major beating in the last few years. Thanks to repeated landslides, severe storms, and erosion, the iconic drive has been greatly damaged. So much so that sections of it have been frequently closed down by the state for months on end.
The PCH is known for being one of the most astonishingly scenic roads in the world. Even if you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing it in person, you’ve more than likely seen it more than a few times featured in car commercials.
The Pacific Coast Highway starts in Orange County, just a few miles south of Long Beach and Irvine, and runs all the way up to the northern part of the state in Mendocino County. Throughout the drive, travelers are treated to countless famous sights like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Big Sur, Pfeiffer State Beach, Dana Point, and Point Loma.
Even for those that have driven along the PCH many times, it never gets stale. It would be almost impossible to grow tired of the views and sensations you experience as you wind your way along the coast. Sadly, for all those that are planning a Californian vacation this summer, it’s looking like at the very least they’ll have to save the PCH for another trip. Worse case scenario, the PCH as we know it just might be on it’s deathbed. Stay tuned to find out why.
Viewcation Presents: Say Goodbye to California’s Pacific Coast Highway
It’s Been Plagued By Landslides
The Pacific Coast Highway was first envisioned back during the era of the first world war.It’s first segments were constructed in 1919. In 1921, federal funds were appropriated, and voters approved additional state funds to extend it. After years of back-breaking, labor-intensive construction – much of which was completed by prison inmates – the highway, as we know it today, was completed in 1934.
Since it’s inception, the PCH has been battered by repeated mud and landslides. The first notable instance of this was in March of 1957 when a segment along the coast between Pacifica and Daly City was damaged and rendered unusable following a 5.3 magnitude earthquake.
In 1983, the Big Rock Mesa Landslide in Malibu caused significant damage to more than 250 homes that ended up collapsing, cracking, or slipping off their foundations.
In 1995 the Devil’s Slide area experienced a major landslide that caused the road to be closed for five months. Then in 2006, another landslide led to a four-month closure.
In 2017, a section of the world-famous highway had to be closed down for several months following a massive landslide that deposited over a million tons of debris and rubble on the road.
The winter of 2017 was the wettest on record. The landslide that resulted from all of that rain destroyed roughly a third of a mile of the iconic highway, while several other sections experienced similar lashings.
Fortunately no injuries or private property damage was reported. Even so, the slides had a significant impact on local residents who essentially got boxed in by the damage. Prior to that year, they were used to most incidents being cleaned up by road crews in a matter of hours. As incidents continue to increase in frequency and magnitude, it’s likely that many residents of the Big Sur area and other focal points along the PCH will have to either relocate or get used to long periods of being disconnected from the rest of the world. Sure, in many cases, they can always take alternate routes to reach surrounding towns, but that still has to be incredibly frustrating and hard on the pocketbook considering Calfifornia’s exorbitant gas prices.
It’s also worth noting the toll that these road closures are having on the local economy. The PCH is known for being one of California’s most popular tourist attractions. If sections of the highway continue to be closed down for months or ever years at a time, this will naturally result in tremendous losses of income to local shops, restaurants, hotels, spas, and resorts.
It’s Falling Into The Ocean
California resident Gary Griggs first experienced the glory of the Pacific Coast Highway in 1956. He was just a child at the time and couldn’t drive himself, but from the backseat of his family’s car, he was utterly blown away by the majestic mountains and rocky cliffs that jutted out of the pacific ocean along the drive.
In the decades that followed, Griggs would drive this breathtaking stretch of road dozens of times. In the process, he not only reveled in it’s stunning beauty but he also began to understand just how fragile it is.
In 2017, Griggs was hired as an erosion expert to provide consultation on a major repair to the highway following the aforementioned landslide that we discussed earlier. That experience completely rattled his perception of the future of the highway. Now, he mournfully has come to the conclusion that the iconic road’s days just might be numbered – at least in it’s present-day form.
Griggs is a professor of Marine sciences at the University of California Santa Cruz, and according to his assessment, future generations are likely to one day reflect on the PCH by saying something to the effect of ‘it was great while it lasted’.
But why is this the case? What went so horribly wrong to result in us discussing the Pacific Coast Highway in such bleak terms?
Well, for one thing, as we’ve already covered, the frequent landslides that have plagued the PCH have not only racked up a serious bill for the state and individual tax-payers to have to cover while also resulting in countless road closures, but now it appears as if climate change and other detrimental factors have led to portions of the highway literally falling into the sea.
In January 2021, after heavy rainfall, a large 150-foot chunk of the highway at mile maker 30 in Monterey County near Rat Creek collapsed into the ocean. It took clean-up crews, contractors, and laborers nearly four months to repair the damage to the point that it could reopen.
Before the repairs were completed, travelers were forced to turn around when they reached the massive, gaping hole that suddenly appeared before them seemingly out of nowhere. Since the part of the road in question was so remote, there was no bypass that could be used to get around the damaged section of the highway.
As global temperatures keep rising due to human-caused climate change, Professor Griggs says that the conditions that have led to the damage that we’ve already seen will only continue to increase. Griggs further speculates that it’s ‘inevitable’ that one day the repairs and temporary fixes won’t be enough to keep the highway open. Even if they are technically feasible, we could find ourselves in a situation where the repair bills will one day simply be too costly to make them worthwhile.
Griggs has termed the region that the PCH travels through a ‘geological nightmare’. It’s comprised of a mixture of hard and soft rock that makes development quite challenging. On top of that, it’s also at the edge of two very prominent and ever-shifting tectonic plates.
These factors have been one of the primary reasons why the PCH has remained a relatively rural stretch of road with not nearly as many of the flashy tourist attractions that you’d expect to find at a world-famous destination.
Travelers desiring to go north or south have several other options to choose from such as the 101 or I-5, but there aren’t any more beautiful ways to experience the Golden States’ dazzling coastline. As you travel along the Pacific Coast Highway, you don’t see any of the usual eyesores like decaying strip malls or dime-a-dozen big-box stores. There really aren’t even that many gas stations to speak of – and the ones that are peppered along the highway tend to offer their goods and services at a premium. After all, it’s not exactly the easiest task to navigate tractor-trailers and tankers along the narrow two-lane highway.
But that’s exactly what makes the PCH so iconic. Without all those distractions, its one of the most unique and unspoiled places in America. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t end up going the way of the dodo.
Storms and Wildfires Have Caused Road Closures
Landslides, erosion, and climate change are just a few of the things that threaten the future of the Pacific Coast Highway. According to our old friend Professor Griggs, it’s less about rising sea levels that we should worry about and more about fires and rain.
Experts have been apprehensive to directly attribute individual instances of road damage to the effects of climate change. The issue is far too complex to be able to isolate the threat posed to one specific thing as it appears to be a very multi-faceted and nuanced problem with a broad range of contributing risk factors.
Still, the effects of climate change are creating the perfect storm of conditions that seem to be exacerbating the highway’s pre-existing problems.
As anyone that’s watched the news recently knows, wildfires have been increasingly causing widespread damage and chaos throughout California – particularly in the Northern half of the state.
These often massive fires create enormous burn scars of scorched earth with little to no vegetation to help hold the soil intact.
In 2020 alone, more than 10,000 fires burned an astonishing 4.2 million acres of the Californian countryside. That accounts for more than 4 percent of the state’s estimated 100 million acres.
Burn scars that impact steep terrain like that found in the Big Sur area create ideal conditions for debris flows and mudslides. When you combine those conditions with a deluge of rainfall, which is something that Coastal California has been getting lot of recently, you start seeing significant increases in terrain damage. Without vegetation to keep the soil glued together, it essentially gets transformed into giant puddles of flowing mud.
Big storms that end up pummeling California with heavy rain and snowfall are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in the years to come, largely because of climate change. With that, we’re also going to see an uptick in structural and property damage along the Pacific Coast Highway. At this point, it’s less of a question of whether the PCH will eventually die and more of a question of “when” it will reach that point of no return.
Since it’s looking more and more like the Pacific Coast Highway will eventually be forced to close down permanently, the best thing that we can do is try and postpone that from happening for as long as possible. It might be seen like a losing battle, but it’s never too late to try and treat the planet with more respect and care.
Regardless of your opinions on climate change, we only have one Earth. There is no planet B. So, let’s at least try not to trash the place.
As long as the Pacific Coast Highway is still open for travel, we highly recommend checking it out at least at some point in your exploration of this incredibly diverse and beautiful country.
Do you think that the it’s the ‘end of the road’ for the Pacific Coast Highway, or do you think that we can continue to adapt and evolve to the changing times by reinforcing and re-imagining it? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. So, feel free to join the conversation in the comments.
As always, thanks for watching, and Happy Travels!