California’s famed and sometimes trouble-plague State Route 1—the Pacific Coast Highway—is again open end-to-end after replacement of a bridge collapse followed by a massive landslide.
The highway, California’s longest state route, hugs the coast for 665 miles, and is a favorite for road-trippers and vacationers as well as locals in towns along the way, including Big Sur. In February 2017, heavy rains sank the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, 150 miles south of San Francisco, and three months later and 35 miles south 3 million cubic feet of the highway and the hills it runs on slid into the Pacific.
The new bridge opened in October, but work has just been completed on the massive regrading and repair. Hotels and restaurants along the route suffered heavy losses and now hope to start making it up—if they can, before the next of the many disasters that have struck the road over the years.
