California’s coastal Highway 1 has always looked precarious, clinging to cliffs that crumble into the Pacific and skirting beaches that are steadily narrowing. Climate change is turning that scenic tension into a structural crisis, as stronger storms, rising seas and chronic erosion outpace the state’s traditional playbook of patching damage and reopening the road. Whether this legendary route can be saved now depends less on engineering heroics than on political will to rethink where, and even if, a highway belongs at the ocean’s edge.
I see Highway 1’s struggle as a test case for how far California is willing to go to defend beloved infrastructure in places that nature is actively reclaiming. The choices being made along Big Sur, at Piedras Blancas and around Elkhorn Slough reveal a quiet but consequential debate: keep fighting a losing battle, or start moving parts of the road out of harm’s way while there is still time.
The climate squeeze on a mythic road
Along Big Sur, the drama that draws travelers in Teslas and rented Jeep Wranglers is the same geology that makes the route fragile. Steep slopes shed rock, narrow coves focus wave energy and the pavement often sits just a few yards from the surf. Scientists now link the increasing volatility of this landscape to human caused climate change, with warmer oceans feeding stronger Pacific storms and more intense “rivers in the sky” that dump heavy rain on already unstable hillsides. One study found these atmospheric rivers are responsible for up to 65% of the western USA’s extreme rain and snow events, a figure that helps explain why landslides keep severing the route.
The winter of 2022 to 2023 offered a stark example when a series of powerful storms triggered the first of two major slides that set off a three year cycle of closures and emergency work along the Big Sur segment. Reporting on those storms describes how the saturated slopes above the highway collapsed, burying lanes and leaving sheer drop offs where asphalt had been, a pattern that has turned this stretch into what some call a foreboding face of climate change. The same accounts note that Highway 1 through Big Sur now fully reflects the new climate reality, with closures measured in months and years rather than days.
Big Sur’s reopening and the cost of constant repair
Earlier this month, California officials celebrated as Scenic Highway 1 Near Big Sur Reopens 3 Years After Damaging Landslides, restoring a continuous coastal drive that had been broken into isolated segments. The reopening followed extensive stabilization work at slide sites, including new retaining structures and reengineered slopes, and local businesses quickly touted the return of tourist traffic that is vital to inns, restaurants and tour operators along the cliffs. Coverage of the event stressed how California’s Scenic Highway 1 Near Big Sur Reopens 3 Years After Damaging Landslides had become a symbol of resilience for nearby communities that depend on visitors drawn to the rugged coastline Near Big Sur.
Yet even as the ribbon was cut, transportation experts warned that the celebration masked a deeper problem: the state is pouring money into repairs that may only last until the next sequence of atmospheric rivers. One coastal geologist quoted in a separate analysis called Caltrans’ seemingly constant repair work “a Band Aid that will never fix the uncontrollable force that is nature, warning that fixes may last only months or a few years before the next failure.
Engineering around the ocean, or away from it
For decades, the default response to slides and erosion has been to rebuild Highway 1 in place, sometimes with bigger walls or deeper piles. In a few rare cases, however, officials have opted for major modifications, including a tunnel that replaced a treacherous stretch and new bridges designed to better withstand increasingly severe climate impacts. Reporting on these projects notes that the photogenic Bixby Bridge has itself become a visual shorthand for the tension between iconic infrastructure and a changing coastline.
Elsewhere, the state has quietly tested a more radical approach: moving the road inland. At Piedras Blancas, north of San Luis Obispo, The California Department of Transportation realigned a vulnerable segment of the route away from the eroding shoreline, shifting Highway 1 onto more stable ground and restoring adjacent lands to more natural conditions. The Piedras Blancas Highway 1 Realignment in San Luis Obispo is now cited by planners as proof that retreat can protect both transportation links and coastal ecosystems when the shoreline is given room to move.
Nature-based defenses and the Elkhorn Slough experiment
Not every vulnerable segment sits on a cliff. Around Elkhorn Slough, north of Monterey, Highway 1 crosses a low lying estuary where rising seas and subsiding marshes threaten to put the pavement at water level. The Highway 1 Elkhorn Slough Corridor Resiliency Project is testing whether restoring wetlands can buffer the road, with planners emphasizing that Elkhorn Slough’s salt marshes are critical for absorbing tidal energy and reducing erosion. The project’s history notes that the development of Moss Landing Harbor in the 1950s, which deepened the main channel and increased tidal exchange, accelerated the decline of those marshes.
Statewide guidance on climate adaptation for transportation now explicitly encourages such nature based strategies, describing how gently sloping benches that extend from the mean tide level, or MTL, toward the backshore can dissipate wave energy before it reaches hard infrastructure. These “Gently” sloping tidal benches are cast as a complement to more traditional defenses like seawalls, which can worsen erosion by reflecting wave energy. If they work at Elkhorn Slough, similar marsh and bench systems could be expanded along other low lying reaches of the corridor, buying time for more permanent decisions about relocation.
Should California give parts of Highway 1 back to the sea?
Behind these engineering choices is a more uncomfortable question that some coastal scholars are now asking outright: should California give Highway 1 back to the ocean in certain places. A University of California analysis argues that the state must weigh the cultural and economic value of keeping the road exactly where it is against the escalating costs and risks of defending every mile, especially in areas where erosion and sea level rise make long term stability unlikely. That debate is sharpened by the recognition that Big Sur’s scenic Highway 1 is under constant threat from landslides and erosion, even as it anchors local jobs and a powerful sense of place.
Transportation officials acknowledge that, for the most part, the focus in California has been on repairing existing infrastructure rather than planning for retreat, a stance one expert named Beck described as a short term necessity that may not hold as climate impacts intensify. Others point to examples like the Piedras Blancas realignment and the Elkhorn Slough corridor as early models of a more selective defense, where some segments are hardened, some are shifted inland and some may eventually be surrendered. As one overview of the route’s future put it, Californians should expect a two tier system in which certain iconic stretches are maintained for as long as possible while more remote or unstable sections are allowed to evolve, even if that means that the road will not always be there in its current form.
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