"The Wildest Pass I Have Yet Seen Here"
POSTCARD
BEFORE CARS
File0127
PASS AGAIN
William Brewer came through here on Thursday, April 4, 1861 as part of a team charged with conducting a geological survey of the state of California. In his journal, Up and Down California, he wrote: "After leaving the previous camp the mountains began to approach the sea; the green hills were scarcely half a mile wide, the barren, rugged sandstone hills rising immediately back of these slaty green hills. This sandstone ridge is a continuous one, and has but one break, the Gaviota Pass, for a hundred miles or more. At the Gaviota a rent or fissure divides the ridge, but a few feet wide at the narrowest part and several hundred feet high. The road passes this 'gate' and then winds up a wild rocky canyon, the wildest pass I have yet seen here. The mountains rise very rugged about 2,000 feet on each side. The narrowest part is not the highest; the road continues to ascend for about six miles where we cross the summit. A horrible trail ran through this formerly, but now the road is good."
Now the road is good...it's generally still true. Recently, however, travelers on the 101 through this stretch have had to endure a bit of Gaviota congestion. Northbound lanes of the highway from Gaviota Beach south of the tunnel to the Highway 1 turnoff north of the tunnel have been shut down while Caltrans completes a three-week construction project to cut open the roadway, replace an aging culvert, and repave the northbound lanes.The two southbound lanes in the construction zone are being used to keep traffic flowing (well, sometimes very slowly) in both directions. To leave the Ranch for northbound travel, usually a cautious crossing of the southbound lanes and a left turn from the middle divider, we now drive south to the next exit, then get off and merge onto the now-northbound side of the southbound lane. To access the Ranch when traveling from the south, usually a lefthand turn, we now keep driving north, exit at the Highway 1 junction by Vista de las Cruces School, then turn around and get back onto the southbound-southbound lane. An omnipresent CHP vehicle keeps watch, and a lot of red lights and orange cones impart an air of excitement unusual to these bucolic parts.
For regular commuters who come through at the busy hours, it's a test of patience, no doubt. But for those of us who can choose our travel times, it's a fascinating opportunity to slow down and really notice the pass. I've come through here so many hundreds, even thousands, of times over the years that I've almost ceased to marvel at its ruggedness and beauty. But travelers have long taken note. A woman named Theresa, for example, came through on the way to San Francisco on March 27, 1924, and with a penny stamp mailed the above picture postcard to her friends, a Mr. and Mrs. Radka who lived in Detroit. In the beautiful penmanship of days gone by, she wrote, "This is some of the Mountains we have Driving around how I wish you were here to Enjoy them with us!"
And somehow that postcard has ended up back in Gaviota, here in my hand.The picture above, taken before the age of automobiles, is one I found in Merlyn Chesnut's excellent history of the area, The Gaviota Land. (It's a book I recommend, if you are lucky enough to find a copy.) As you can see, this was a very narrow pass, often blocked by boulders that rolled down from the cliffs, treacherous in hard rain, frequently obstructed by mud and debris. It was not until 1854 that pioneers chiseled at the cliffs to widen the opening for wagons. (The Chesnut book mentions that Colonel Hollister disassembled his sister's wagon in order to get it through the pass...in pieces.)
The photo is not a very crisp image, but you can sort of see someone on horseback (I think) towards the right, approaching the Indian head rock formation.Which brings me to the fact of that familiar Indian, the guardian of Gaviota Pass. One of the bonuses of the current highway project has been the opportunity to view it slowly, closely, and from different directions. (I know. My life is filled with thrills...try to contain yourself.)
Above you see the Indian, decades ago, though I'm not sure of the date...and today. The pass has undergone many changes over the years, but that distinctive rock profile remains a constant. The first county road was built in 1861, the year that Brewer's expedition passed through. Dynamite was used to widen the opening to the pass and a wooden bridge was constructed over the creek. In 1915 the State Division of Highways took over the road, graveling, straightening, widening, and rerouting. A steel suspension bridge (see picture below) was built to replace the wooden span.There to the left is another photo from the Chesnut book that shows the rock formation and the steel suspension bridge.Still later, the steel bridge was replaced by a 190-foot reinforced concrete overpass. During construction of the overpass, concern was expressed about the danger to passing traffic posed by the large overhanging rock on the west side of the pass, the one resembling the head of an Indian. Fortunately, folks protested destruction of the rock, and although some safety modifications were made, most of it was retained...and endures.
The highway through Gaviota was to undergo the most significant transformation in the 1950s, with its gradual conversion into a four-lane limited access freeway. Rather than further widening the gorge by removing massive amounts of rock from the mountainside, the Gaviota tunnel was "holed through" early in 1952 and completed in May 1953.There it is. In one of those quirks of cinema history, it happens to be the tunnel that Dustin Hoffman drove through in The Graduate, supposedly on his way south to Santa Barbara, but as any local knows, he would have been northbound.
Anyway, it's picturesque.
In addition to the natural difficulties of getting through this once-treacherous pass, stories abound of bandits and ambushes. Today of course the biggest threat would be bad driving, and we see plenty of that. Meanwhile, the sentinel Indian keeps silent watch over his domain, even now as traffic snarls and frustrated drivers grouse about the gridlock.It's a short-term inconvenience. All things considered, I think it's pretty amazing that we can drive through here as routinely as we do, and the landscape is still stunning. And look...here's a picture of the Indian face rock looking north from the southbound lane, if that makes any sense, a view only possible for another week or so:
