The First Freeways of Los Angeles-Ramona/Air Line, Cahuenga & Arroyo Seco Pkwys

[andy3175]

Found this article from August 2012 that includes some nice pictures of LA's first freeways as well as maps:

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/history/la-as-subject/las-first-freeways.html

I think AgentSteel will like the 1940 photo that shows a one-way sign on the Arroyo Seco Parkway (image appears on top of the main page).

In the 1930s, L.A.'s transportation planners and engineers were mired in a stalemate with the city's automotive traffic. Based on the recommendations of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Harland Bartholomew, and Charles Henry Cheney in their 1924 "Major Traffic Street Plan" -- available online through the Metro Transportation Library and Archive -- the city had already widened and extended key thoroughfares, essentially overlaying a system of modern arterial boulevards atop the city's original ad hoc network of automobile roads. But as David Brodsly recounts in his 1981 paean, "L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay," the city's growing population and strong attachment to the motorcar, combined with the long decline of the interurban and urban trolley systems, rendered each major road-building initiative obsolete by the time it was completed.

On November 12, 1933, the city announced its first major effort to implement these new ideas in highway design. The Arroyo Seco Parkway is usually credited as L.A.'s first freeway, but that distinction actually belongs to a four-mile stretch of Ramona Boulevard. Built between 1933 and 1935 at a cost of $877,000, the highway linked downtown Los Angeles to the communities of the southern San Gabriel Valley. It offered all the features of a modern freeway except -- at first -- a center divider. Nine bridges carried cross-traffic safely over the roadway, and driveways to adjacent properties were prohibited. The roadway, dubbed the "Air Line route," was seen as a major achievement in traffic design.

But the Air Line's poor safety record tarnished enthusiasm for the roadway, which opened on April 20, 1935. With no center divider, the freeway recorded 77 injuries in its first 40 months. In response, the city added a steel center guardrail that featured black-and-white striping, reflective paneling, and blinking amber lights placed at 100-foot intervals.

Built at a cost of $1.5 million and partly financed by the federal Public Works Administration (PWA), the two-mile Cahuenga Pass Freeway eliminated a notorious bottleneck at the place where one of the state's first highways -- El Camino Real -- crossed the Santa Monica Mountains. The freeway replaced a narrow, winding road between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley with an eight-lane superhighway. A pair of Pacific Electric rails ran down the freeway's center divider. The first mile of the freeway opened on June 15, 1940. California Governor Culbert Olson and Los Angeles Mayor Fletcher Bowron presided over a star-studded dedication ceremony that recalled the freeway's historical precursors with a procession of horses, stagecoaches, and antique automobiles. The state later removed the Pacific Electric tracks and incorporated the Cahuenga Pass Freeway into the longer Hollywood (US-101) Freeway.

Ramona Boulevard and the Cahuenga Pass Freeway may have preceded it, but the Arroyo Seco Parkway was the most impressive of L.A.'s early superhighways. The $6 million, 6.8-mile road followed, as the Times wrote, "nature's river route" between Pasadena and Los Angeles, through Highland Park. ... The first Highland Park segment opened on July 20, 1940, with no posted speed limit.  ... Built with funding from the state, the city of Los Angeles, the Depression-era PWA and Works Progress Administration, and gasoline taxes from Los Angeles and South Pasadena, the new freeway originally extended from Glenarm Street in Pasadena to the Figueroa Street Tunnels; its southern terminus would not reach downtown L.A. for several years. After less than three years of construction, the Arroyo Seco officially opened on December 30, 1940 -- just in time for Pasadena's Tournament of Roses festivities. Rose Queen Sally Stanton joined public officials in dedicating the parkway, which Governor Olson praised for providing "easy, nerve-free comfort and safety."

Finally, in 1947, the California passed the Collier-Burns Highway Act. The legislation introduced a 1.5 cent statewide fuel tax for new highway construction, ushering in the era of massive freeway construction and permanently altering the Southern California landscape.

Regards,
Andy

[hm insulators]

My mother would be interested in those old pictures; both my parents moved to the Pasadena area when they were children (early 1940s).

[agentsteel53]

astonishingly effective diagram showing that a cloverleaf is sometimes no better than a set of RIROs.

[NE2]

The 1935 piece of Ramona Boulevard stretched from Mission Road to Monterey Pass Road. Here's a CHPW article on the road: http://libraryarchives.metro.net/DPGTL/Californiahighways/chpw_1935_feb.pdf

It was not a full freeway. A 1948 aerial photo clearly shows driveways and intersections in the Herbert Avenue area, where an existing road was widened. Other intersections included the Ramona/Garvey split west of Fremont Avenue, an apparent RIRO at Montezuma Avenue just to the south, and perhaps the access to Marengo/Soto (by 1948 new ramps were in place; these were definitely not part of the original construction, which had only eight bridges - CHPW p. 20). The only bridges that were not extensions of existing railway overpasses were at Fremont and Monterey Pass at the east end.

[J N Winkler]

It was not a full freeway. A 1948 aerial photo clearly shows driveways and intersections in the Herbert Avenue area, where an existing road was widened. Other intersections included the Ramona/Garvey split west of Fremont Avenue, an apparent RIRO at Montezuma Avenue just to the south, and perhaps the access to Marengo/Soto (by 1948 new ramps were in place; these were definitely not part of the original construction, which had only eight bridges - CHPW p. 20). The only bridges that were not extensions of existing railway overpasses were at Fremont and Monterey Pass at the east end.

I would like to thank NE2 for doing some of the legwork toward refutation.  The blog piece's claim of "first freeway" for Ramona Boulevard was highly suspect, not least because contemporary coverage in CHPW of the 1940 opening of the Arroyo Seco Parkway stressed that it was California's first freeway.

This said, let us now delve into the article from the Februrary 1935 CHPW that NE2 cited:  R.C. Myers, "Ramona Boulevard, a 6-mile 'Airline' Route without Grade Crossings," pp. 6-7, 20, 24.  Two of the five pages are photo pages.

Regarding freeway features, the text says (p. 6):

This boulevard will extend for nearly six miles to Monterey Park having no grade crossings with either railroads or main highways and direct connections with only a few relatively unimportant streets.

The center photo on the first photo page (p. 7) shows a tangent length of the new Ramona Boulevard leading to the Eastern Avenue grade separation.  Pacific Electric streetcar tracks are to the left, while houses with driveways opening directly onto the boulevard are to the right.  The spacing between driveways seems tighter than that subsequently allowed by permit for certain California "lawyer freeways" (which technically do not meet the AASHTO definition of a freeway).

Edit:  I also checked and it appears that the LA City engineering vault has a number of construction plans for Ramona Boulevard.  Here is what I have found (index numbers in italic can be used to retrieve the TIFF aperture card scans using the search function):

P-5250--This is a grading and surfacing contract (drawn up by the City of Los Angeles as a street improvement project, but rather confusingly stamped as "State Contract" with a date of April 8, 1935) for the Ramona Boulevard from Fickett Street west to State Street; this corresponds to a length of the present San Bernardino Freeway from the I-5 interchange complex to about a mile east.  Since this contract does not include bridges, their location has to be inferred by looking for callouts for pier guards on the plans.  Moving from west to east (nowadays the direction of milepost increase on I-10), the plan shows overpasses at State Street, Cornwell Street (now gone), Marengo Street, and Soto Street (the latter two receiving a shared pier guard).  An intersection with St. Louis Street was dealt with by providing a paved throat with curb returns; much the same appears to have been provided at Pomeroy Street.  Other intersections (Breed Street and several alleys) were dealt with by extending the Ramona Boulevard curb line across the intersection--the plan does not show any barricades that might have been erected on these cross streets.

D-3548--This is a grading and surfacing plan for Ramona Boulevard between State Street and Aliso Street.  In modern terms, this is the length of the San Bernardino Freeway from the US 101 (Santa Ana Freeway) wye east to just past the core of the I-5/I-10 interchange.  Again, this is an apparent City of Los Angeles street improvement with a "State Contract" (date of April 8, 1935) notation.  Again, moving from west to east, overpasses are shown at Macy Street (now César Chávez Avenue)and Lord Street (now demolished--its alignment grazes what is now the core of the I-5/I-10 interchange).  Paved throats with curb returns were provided for intersections with Aliso Street (subsequently swallowed by the Aliso Street Viaduct, the forerunner of the I-10/US 101 wye) and Safford Street.

P-5181--This is a 1931 City of Los Angeles street improvement plan for what was then called Harrison Street, from Indiana Street west to Soto Street.  It was subsequently absorbed into Ramona Boulevard.  All intersections with other streets are on the level with paved throats and curb returns.

P-9407--This is a 1941 project actually carried out by the California Division of Highways and drawn up as a state highway improvement (title sheet signature by Spencer V. Cortelyou, then the District 7 engineer and now sometimes called "Father of the Freeways," is dated July 12, 1941).  It calls for upgrades to Ramona Boulevard (LRN 26) from just west of Macy Street (LRN 2) to just east of Indiana Street.  These include what I take to be replacement of the center barrier (installed in 1938 as a retrofit to the 1935 roadway) with a curbed center divider, installation of chain link fencing (not, however, across any existing intersections with paved throats and curb returns), an overhead for the "inlet ramp" from Pomeroy Street northbound to Ramona Boulevard westbound, ramps to connect Ramona Boulevard eastbound to Pomeroy Street, and an overhead for a ramp from Ramona Boulevard westbound to Marengo Street.  The structural work was actually carried out in separate bridge contracts and so is tagged as "not in this contract," although paving of approaches is included.  The plan also provides for the construction of an "outer lane" (really a frontage road) on the south side of Ramona Boulevard, beginning as a cul-de-sac just east of the Marengo Street ramp and continuing eastward through intersections with Fickett Street, Tremont Avenue, and Evergreen Avenue.  The Fickett Street crossing, originally built in 1931 as a flat intersection as part of the Harrison Street improvement, gets modified to provide a RIRO connection with the eastbound Ramona Boulevard.

P-9203--This is a 1944 plan (drawn up as a street improvement) for a "temporary ramp" connecting Mission Road to Ramona Boulevard eastbound, and is actually part of the Aliso Street Viaduct total project.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much all the LA City engineering vault has for the Ramona Boulevard, which crossed into East Los Angeles (an unincorporated CDP) at Indiana Street and then into Monterey Park (incorporated, with a present-day population of 61,000) just east of the Eastern Avenue overpass.  Many of the interesting features described in the CHPW article, such as the underpass for Coyote Pass Road, are in parts of the route for which Los Angeles would not have coverage.  (I have not been able to find Coyote Pass Road or, for that matter, a length of Monterey Pass Road near Ramona Boulevard in casual Google Maps searching.)

[DTComposer]

Many of the interesting features described in the CHPW article, such as the underpass for Coyote Pass Road, are in parts of the route for which Los Angeles would not have coverage.  (I have not been able to find Coyote Pass Road or, for that matter, a length of Monterey Pass Road near Ramona Boulevard in casual Google Maps searching.)

That didn't sound right to me, so I figured the photo on the top of page 7 of the article might have actually been the Garvey Avenue overcrossing of Monterey Pass (nee Coyote Pass) Road/Fremont Avenue:

https://www.google.com/maps?q=monterey+park,+ca&hl=en&ll=34.059926,-118.145387&spn=0.000974,0.001255&sll=34.059926,-118.145383&sspn=0.00416,0.004734&t=h&hnear=Monterey+Park,+Los+Angeles,+California&z=20&layer=c&cbll=34.059926,-118.145383&panoid=CMzQ4BHZL40rv51PrpbQYw&cbp=12,104.17,,0,-0.67

Which would be on the route marked on page 6 of the article.