California, Highway 1: From San Francisco to Los Angeles
When to go
September and October are the best months, warm, clear and past the summer crowds. From May to August the coast is often under a grey morning fog, the locals call it June Gloom, while a few kilometres inland it is hot and sunny; San Francisco in July can be colder than in October. Winter is green and quiet but it is the rainy season, and the storms are what bring the landslides down onto the road in Big Sur.
The stops
Interactive map of the route on our site ›
- San Francisco2 nights
The Gold Rush turned a village of about a thousand people into a city within a few years. Levi Strauss, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria, opened a dry-goods business here in 1853, and in 1873 he and Jacob Davis, a Jewish tailor from Riga, patented work trousers strengthened with copper rivets, the first blue jeans.
- Half Moon Baystop on the way
A farming and fishing town known for its pumpkin fields. Just north of the harbour, off Pillar Point, lies Mavericks, where winter swells build some of the biggest surfable waves in the world; it is named after Maverick, a white German shepherd who swam out after his owner and the surfers in 1961.
- Santa Cruz CAone night
A surfing town with the oldest seaside amusement park in California, the Beach Boardwalk. Its wooden roller coaster, the Giant Dipper, has run since 1924 and is a National Historic Landmark, as is the Looff carousel of 1911.
- Monterey2 nights
The capital of California under Spain and Mexico. Its sardine canneries closed when the fish vanished in the 1950s, and Cannery Row, the street John Steinbeck put in his novel of 1945, now holds the Monterey Bay Aquarium, opened in 1984 on the site of the Hovden cannery.
- 17-Mile Drivestop on the way
A private toll road through the forest and golf courses of Pebble Beach, along a coast of rocks, seals and wind-bent trees. The Lone Cypress, clinging to a granite outcrop above the sea, is the trademark of the Pebble Beach Company; you may photograph it, but not use the picture for business.
- Carmel-by-the-Seastop on the way
A village of cottages and galleries above a white beach, where the houses have no street numbers and the residents collect their mail at the post office. Clint Eastwood served as its mayor from 1986 to 1988.
- Point Lobosstop on the way
A small reserve of coves, granite headlands and kelp forest, with sea otters, harbour seals and, in winter, grey whales passing offshore. The Monterey cypress grows wild in only two places on earth, here and across the bay at Cypress Point.
- Bixby Creek Bridgestop on the way
A concrete arch over a gorge that opens to the sea, finished in 1932. Before it was built, the way south ran inland along the Old Coast Road, which in winter turned to mud; there are turnouts at both ends for the photograph.
- Big Surone night
The mountains of the Santa Lucia range fall straight into the ocean here, and the highway along them took eighteen years to build, until 1937, partly with the labour of convicts from San Quentin. In Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, named for a family who settled in 1869, short trails lead among the redwoods.
- McWay Fallsstop on the way
A waterfall of about 24 metres that drops out of the cliff onto a beach in a turquoise cove, in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. The beach cannot be reached; you see it from a short path from the car park, and until landslides in the 1980s filled the cove with sand, the water fell straight into the sea.
- Piedras Blancas Elephant Sealsstop on the way
A beach right beside the highway where thousands of elephant seals come ashore to give birth, moult and fight, watched from a free boardwalk. Hunted for their oil, they were nearly wiped out in the nineteenth century; the first few settled on this beach only in 1990.
- Hearst Castlestop on the way
The hilltop palace of the newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst, designed by the architect Julia Morgan and built from 1919 until 1947, with a Roman-style Neptune Pool and whole ceilings brought from Europe. Hearst kept a private zoo here, and zebras descended from it still graze beside the highway below.
- Cambriaone night
A village of pines above the sea, a few minutes south of Hearst Castle. The forest around it is one of only three native stands of Monterey pine on the California coast, and on the hill above Main Street Arthur Beal spent some fifty years, from 1928, building his house, Nit Wit Ridge, out of beer cans, abalone shells and other cast-offs; it is now a California Historical Landmark.
- Morro Rockstop on the way
A dome of volcanic rock rising from the harbour of Morro Bay, the last of a chain of old volcanic plugs called the Nine Sisters that runs inland to San Luis Obispo. Peregrine falcons nest on it, and climbing it is forbidden.
- San Luis Obispoone night
A college town that grew around the mission founded by Junípero Serra in 1772, the fifth of the twenty-one Spanish missions of California. In Bubblegum Alley, downtown, the brick walls are covered with chewed gum stuck there by passers-by for decades.
- Solvangstop on the way
A town founded in 1911 by Danish immigrants who came to build a Danish school and community, now dressed in half-timbered houses, windmills and bakeries. It keeps a bronze copy of the Little Mermaid and a museum of Hans Christian Andersen.
- Santa Barbara CAone night
The mission, founded in 1786, is called the Queen of the Missions for its twin bell towers. After the earthquake of 1925 the city rebuilt itself in a single style, white walls and red tile roofs in the Spanish manner, and still requires it downtown.
- Venturaone night
The town grew around the mission of San Buenaventura, founded in 1782, the ninth and last of the California missions founded by Junípero Serra himself. From Ventura Harbor the boats leave for Channel Islands National Park, five islands off the coast with plants and animals found nowhere else, among them the island fox.
- Malibustop on the way
More than thirty kilometres of beaches and cliffside homes along the Pacific Coast Highway. Surfrider Beach, beside the pier, became the first World Surfing Reserve in 2010; up the road, the Getty Villa copies a Roman villa buried at Herculaneum, and entry is free with a timed reservation.
- Los Angeles2 nights
The Hollywood sign went up in 1923 to read Hollywoodland, an advertisement for a housing development; the last four letters came down in 1949. The great studios were founded largely by Jewish immigrants and their sons, among them the Warner brothers, Louis B. Mayer and Adolph Zukor.
What it costs
Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the fees are yours. Highway 1 itself is free, but the 17-Mile Drive is a private road with a fee per car at the gate, the state parks charge per car for the day, and parking in San Francisco and on the coast near Carmel is scarce and paid. Fuel in California is among the dearest in the country, and dearest of all in Big Sur. This route leaves the car in Los Angeles, so the rental company adds a one-way drop charge; ask for it when you book. The extras worth budgeting are the tour of Hearst Castle, best booked ahead, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
What to know
Three things. One: the road through Big Sur. Highway 1 between Carmel and San Simeon is cut into cliffs that slide in the winter storms, and parts of it have been closed for months at a time; when a section is shut, the only way south is back inland to US 101, which adds hours. Check the Caltrans QuickMap site or app the evening before and again in the morning, and do not trust the navigation app to know. Two: fuel. Between Carmel and Cambria, about 150 kilometres, there are only a few pumps, small and very expensive, and there is no phone signal on long stretches; fill up in Monterey or Carmel and download the maps. Three: American driving. A right turn on a red light is allowed after a full stop unless a sign forbids it; at a four-way stop the first car to stop goes first; and when a yellow school bus stops with red lights flashing, traffic in both directions must stop. An Israeli licence in English is accepted by the rental companies, and an international licence is worth carrying.
Roads, tolls and rules
The United States drives on the right, and distances and speeds are in miles. The first day follows Highway 1 down the coast to Santa Cruz, slower but far prettier than the freeway, and the next morning goes on to Monterey. Through Big Sur the road is two lanes on the edge of the cliff, with bends all the way and turnouts for the views; let faster cars pass, and drive it in daylight. The days are kept short, none much over 160 kilometres: Big Sur is driven over two days, with a night in the middle of it and another in Cambria, and the south is split with nights in Santa Barbara and Ventura. Rooms in Big Sur are few and fill early, so book them first. The last hour into Los Angeles is freeway traffic.
Travel California, Highway 1: From San Francisco to Los Angeles
The route on our site, with a room up to $80 every night.