A modern traveler’s guide to the magic of old Big Sur

LOS ANGELES — Feet wet and thoughts adrift, a handful of us slouched on wooden chairs in the middle of the Big Sur River, shaded by tall trees, surrounded by gently moving water.

“I wish I could always live like this!” said Catie Bryant of Seaside.

“You can put your feet in the river and listen to the birds. Why would you not?” said Cori Graves of Portland, Ore.

We had nature right where we wanted it, with the Big Sur River Inn’s bar just a few steps away. And this was only possible because of Highway 1, the Mother Road of California tourism, begun a century ago, completed in 1937 along a forbidding coastline of redwoods, rocky slopes and crashing waves.

I’d put together this road trip with two goals: to learn what a traveler should know about Big Sur now and to look for hints of those days in the 1920s and ’30s when the coast road opened and the world rushed in.

I already knew some bad news: The Lucia Lodge restaurant and store, a landmark since 1937, burned down one night in August 2021. The lodge’s 10 clifftop guest rooms are still rentable, but the restaurant’s rebuilding timetable is unknown.

Meanwhile, room rates are up and campsites are hard to come by. Fearing that travelers will start to sleep in their cars along the highway, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors in July boosted the fine for that from $200 to $1,000 per night.

Fortunately, I found plenty of good news along the coast road too. And I’m not just talking about the holy granola or the views from the Bixby Creek Bridge.

It was 1922 when the road crews began connecting San Simeon to Carmel. That meant cutting through woods and slopes that were the unchallenged domain of the native Esselen, Rumsen and Salinan people until Spanish troops arrived in the 18th century, the homesteaders in the 19th.

Thwarted by the steep, rocky topography and the arrival of the Great