🛣🎙 California Highways - Route by Route (CARxR) #2.01: Route 1 – Orange County

[cahwyguy]

Welcome back to season 2 of California Highways: Route by Route. With Season 2 we return to the original premise of the podcast: Going route by route through every state highway. We start with Route 1 and its segment in Orange County. In this episode, we'll go over what was the first national highway, the first state highway, the first legislative route, and then explore the history of today's route 1, looking specifically at the segment from Dana Point to Seal Beach. We hope to pick up the pace a little (after all, we have 34 planned seasons to get through), and the next episode will cover Route 1 in Los Angeles County.

Link to the show on its forever home: https://caroutebyroute.org/2023/10/16/carxr-2-01-route-1-orange-county/

Link to the show on Spotify for Podcasters: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/caroutebyroute/episodes/CARxR-2-01-Route-1---Orange-County-e2aloup

As always: Ready, Set, Discuss.

[Quillz]

Route 1? Oh, you meant Route 3, later known as US-101 Alt.

I still think extending Route 1 south of the Las Cruces Junction was very forced, given there's a long drive between the junction and Oxnard. But someone explained that it's more than likely a "brand name recognition" sort of decision. Route 1 had been associated with the coast by 1964, so extending it southward to follow PCH likely made sense. I guess the desire to use one number for otherwise unrelated coastal roads made sense in 1964.

[Max Rockatansky]

That and the Division of Highways really wanted an Interstate 3 in 1958.  I suspect repurposing the number for the Scott Mountain corridor rather than putting it back on PCH might have made that it easier process if a suitable freeway corridor was found.  If I recall correctly the DOH tried to get US 101 south of the Bay Area added as a chargeable Interstate corridor in 1968.

[cahwyguy]

Route 1? Oh, you meant Route 3, later known as US-101 Alt.

I still think extending Route 1 south of the Las Cruces Junction was very forced, given there's a long drive between the junction and Oxnard. But someone explained that it's more than likely a "brand name recognition" sort of decision. Route 1 had been associated with the coast by 1964, so extending it southward to follow PCH likely made sense. I guess the desire to use one number for otherwise unrelated coastal roads made sense in 1964.

If you listen to the episode, you'll see we're organizing things by the current Route number. So we do note this section of current Route 1 is former Sign Route 3 and former US 101A.

One of the things we note in the episode is how the PCH name, which really only goes with the route S of Ventura, seems to be extending up the coast (at least informally), subsuming names like Cabrillo Highway, Shoreline, etc. We'll be covering things like that more as we work our way up the state.