Highway 1, from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Big Sur

The Pacific coast, from San Francisco to Malibu

Highway 1 runs along the Pacific between San Francisco and Los Angeles. First you drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and back, for the view from the Marin Headlands. Then the road heads south past cliffs, pumpkin fields and lighthouses. In Santa Cruz, you find the surfers and the Boardwalk amusement park.

After Monterey and Carmel comes Big Sur: 114 kilometres of coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains drop into the ocean. No towns, few petrol stations, often no signal. The stops come one after another: Garrapata, Bixby Creek Bridge, the Point Sur lighthouse, Pfeiffer Beach, McWay Falls. The viewpoints are on the ocean side: driving south, you pull in without crossing the oncoming lane.

Further south, the coast grows gentler: Morro Rock, the Pismo dunes, then Santa Barbara and its red-tiled roofs. After Oxnard, the road becomes the Pacific Coast Highway, runs past Malibu and leads to Santa Monica, where a sign on the pier marks the symbolic end of Route 66.

California’s sea otters have come a long way. Hunted for their fur, they were thought to have died out. In 1938, about fifty were spotted near Bixby Creek, and the otters on the coast today descend from those survivors. Since 1997, captive-bred California condors have also been released in Big Sur.

At Piedras Blancas, the first elephant seals settled in 1990. Today there are thousands, visible all year round from a viewpoint beside the road. Further north, the Año Nuevo colony can be visited with a guide from mid-December to the end of March, and on your own with a permit the rest of the year.

Big Sur, a road cut into the cliff

California approved the Big Sur road in 1919; the work took eighteen years. Prisoners from San Quentin worked on it for 35 cents a day and time off their sentences. The best known of the road’s bridges, Bixby Creek Bridge, opened in 1932: 218 metres long, with a 110-metre concrete arch. The road opened in 1937.

The mountain is still unstable. Landslides often cut the road: Mud Creek in 2017, then Regent’s Slide, which closed it from February 2024 to 14 January 2026. In summer 2026, the Timber and Plaskett fires cut it again, until it fully reopened in mid-September. Before you set off, check its state on QuickMap, Caltrans’ online map.

What not to miss

1. 1The Golden Gate BridgeCross it heading north to see it from the Marin Headlands.
2. 2Monterey Bay AquariumOn Cannery Row, on the site of an old sardine cannery.
3. 3Pfeiffer BeachSand tinged with purple and an arch in the rocks.
4. 4McWay FallsA 24-metre waterfall that drops onto a beach, or into the ocean at high tide.
5. 5Hearst CastleHearst’s palace, built by Julia Morgan from 1919 to 1947; you go up by bus.
6. 6Santa Barbara MissionKnown as the ‘Queen of the Missions’, with its twin-towered façade.

Highway 1 in pictures

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The Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands, with the bay and San Francisco behind.

Food on the California coast

In San Francisco, people eat clam chowder, a clam soup served in a sourdough bread bowl. Castroville, near Monterey, calls itself the artichoke capital of the world. In Half Moon Bay, pumpkins get their own festival in October.

Further south, tri-tip, a cut of beef, is grilled over an oak fire, Santa Maria style. On Thursday evenings, a big market fills the centre of San Luis Obispo. The Santa Ynez valley makes pinot noirs, and Solvang sells æbleskiver, small round Danish pancakes.