Part 1

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ON SUNSET HIGHWAYS

"SEE AMERICA FIRST" SERIES

Each in one volume, decorative cover, profusely illustrated

CALIFORNIA, ROMANTIC AND BEAUTIFUL BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES $6.00

NEW MEXICO: The Land of the Delight Makers BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES $6.00

SEVEN WONDERLANDS OF THE AMERICAN WEST BY THOMAS D. MURPHY $6.00

A WONDERLAND OF THE EAST: The Mountain and Lake Region of New England and Eastern New York BY WILLIAM COPEMAN KITCHIN, PH.D. $6.00

ON SUNSET HIGHWAYS (California) BY THOMAS D. MURPHY $6.00

TEXAS, THE MARVELLOUS BY NEVIN O. WINTER $6.00

ARIZONA, THE WONDERLAND BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES $6.00

COLORADO: THE QUEEN JEWEL OF THE ROCKIES BY MAE LACY BAGGS $6.00

OREGON, THE PICTURESQUE BY THOMAS D. MURPHY $6.00

FLORIDA, THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT BY NEVIN O. WINTER $6.00

SUNSET CANADA (British Columbia and Beyond) BY ARCHIE BELL $6.00

ALASKA, OUR BEAUTIFUL NORTHLAND OF OPPORTUNITY BY AGNES RUSH BURR $6.00

UTAH: THE LAND OF BLOSSOMING VALLEYS BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES $6.00

NEW ENGLAND HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS FROM A MOTOR CAR BY THOMAS D. MURPHY $6.00

VIRGINIA: THE OLD DOMINION. As seen from its Colonial waterway, the Historic River James BY FRANK AND CORTELLE HUTCHINS $5.00

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass.

On Sunset Highways

A Book of Motor Rambles in California

New and Revised Edition

BY THOS. D. MURPHY

AUTHOR OF

"IN UNFAMILIAR ENGLAND WITH A MOTOR CAR," "SEVEN WONDERLANDS OF THE AMERICAN WEST," "NEW ENGLAND HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS," ETC.

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR FROM ORIGINAL PAINTINGS, MAINLY BY CALIFORNIA ARTISTS, AND THIRTY-TWO DUOGRAVURES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS. ALSO ROAD MAP COVERING ENTIRE STATE.

BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1915, by L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

Copyright, 1921, by L. C. PAGE & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

Made in U. S. A.

Preface

The publishers tell me that the first large edition of "On Sunset Highways" has been exhausted and that the steady demand for the book warrants a reprint. I have, therefore, improved the occasion to revise the text in many places and to add descriptive sketches of several worth-while tours we subsequently made. As it stands now I think the book covers most of the ground of especial interest to the average motorist in California.

One can not get the best idea of this wonderful country from the railway train or even from the splendid electric system that covers most of the country surrounding Los Angeles. The motor that takes one into the deep recesses of hill and valley to infrequented nooks along the seashore and, above all, to the slopes and summits of the mountains, is surely the nearest approach to the ideal.

The California of to-day is even more of a motor paradise than when we made our first ventures on her highroads. There has been a substantial increase in her improved highways and every subsequent year will no doubt see still further extensions. The beauty and variety of her scenery will always remain and good roads will give easy access to many hereto almost inaccessible sections. And the charm of her romantic history will not decrease as the years go by. There is a growing interest in the still existing relics of the mission days and the Spanish occupation which we may hope will lead to their restoration and preservation. All of which will make motoring in California more delightful than ever.

I do not pretend in this modest volume to have covered everything worth while in this vast state; neither have I chosen routes so difficult as to be inaccessible to the ordinary motor tourist. I have not attempted a guide-book in the usual sense; my first aim has been to reflect by description and picture something of the charm of this favored country; but I hope that the book may not be unacceptable as a traveling companion to the motor tourist who follows us. Conditions of roads and towns change so rapidly in California that due allowance must be made by anyone who uses the book in this capacity. Up-to-the-minute information as to road conditions and touring conveniences may be had at the Automobile Club in Los Angeles or at any of its dozen branches in other towns in Southern California.

In choosing the paintings to be reproduced as color illustrations, I was impressed with the wealth of material I discovered; in fact, California artists have developed a distinctive school of American landscape art. With the wealth and variety of subject matter at the command of these enthusiastic western painters, it is safe to predict that their work is destined to rank with the best produced in America—and I believe that the examples which I show will amply warrant this prediction.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

I A MOTOR PARADISE 1

II ROUND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 19

III ROUND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 43

IV ROUND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 62

V THE INLAND ROUTE TO SAN DIEGO 82

VI ROUND ABOUT SAN DIEGO 110

VII THE IMPERIAL VALLEY AND THE SAN DIEGO BACK COUNTRY 126

VIII THE SAN DIEGO COAST ROUTE 150

IX SANTA BARBARA 178

X SANTA BARBARA TO MONTEREY 198

XI THE CHARM OF OLD MONTEREY 225

XII MEANDERINGS FROM MONTEREY TO SAN FRANCISCO 252

XIII TO BEAUTIFUL CLEAR LAKE VALLEY 277

XIV THE NETHERLANDS OF CALIFORNIA 296

XV A CHAPTER OF ODDS AND ENDS 311

XVI OUR RUN TO YOSEMITE 343

XVII LAKE TAHOE 358

In making acknowledgment to the photographers through whose courtesy I am able to present the beautiful monotones of California's scenery and historic missions, I can only say that I think that the artistic beauty and sentiment evinced in every one of these pictures entitles its author to be styled artist as well as photographer. These enthusiastic Californians—Dassonville, Pillsbury, Putnam, and Taylor—are thoroughly in love with their work and every photograph they take has the merits of an original composition. I had the privilege of selecting, from many thousands, the examples shown in this book and while I doubt if thirty-two pictures of higher average could be found, it must not be forgotten that these artists have hundreds of other delightful views that would grace any collection. I heartily recommend any reader of the book to visit these studios if he desires appropriate and enduring mementos of California's scenic beauty.

Detailed maps covering any proposed tour can be had by application to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

THE AUTHOR.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOR PLATES

PAGE

THE GATE OF VAL PAISO CANYON, MONTEREY Frontispiece

HILLSIDE NEAR MONTEREY 1

CLOISTERS, SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO 72

PALM CANYON 132

WILD MUSTARD, MIRAMAR 194

POPPIES AND LUPINES 198

OAKS NEAR PASO ROBLES 214

CYPRESS POINT, MONTEREY 225

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON HOUSE 234

EVENING NEAR MONTEREY 242

A FOREST GLADE 246

THE PACIFIC NEAR GOLDEN GATE 277

A DISTANT VIEW OF MT. TAMALPAIS 311

VERNAL FALLS, YOSEMITE 350

NEVADA FALL, YOSEMITE 352

ON THE SHORE OF LAKE TAHOE 372

DUOGRAVURES

SAN GABRIEL MISSION 64

CORRIDOR, SAN FERNANDO MISSION 74

CAMPANILE, PALA MISSION 106

SAN DIEGO MISSION 110

A BACK COUNTRY OAK 134

ROAD TO WARNER'S HOT SPRINGS 146

A BACK COUNTRY VALLEY 148

TORREY PINES, NEAR LA JOLLA 158

RUINS OF CHAPEL, SAN LUIS REY 164

ENTRANCE TO SAN LUIS REY CEMETERY 166

FATHER O'KEEFE AT SAN LUIS REY 168

A CORNER OF CAPISTRANO 170

ARCHES, CAPISTRANO 172

RUINED CLOISTERS, CAPISTRANO 174

RUINS OF CAPISTRANO CHURCH BY MOONLIGHT 176

GIANT GRAPEVINE NEAR CARPINTERIA 184

ARCADE, SANTA BARBARA 186

THE OLD CEMETERY, SANTA BARBARA 188

THE FORBIDDEN GARDEN, SANTA BARBARA 190

BELL TOWER, SANTA YNEZ 204

INTERIOR CHURCH, SAN MIGUEL 216

ARCADE, SAN MIGUEL 218

DRIVE THROUGH GROUNDS, DEL MONTE HOTEL 228

CARMEL MISSION 236

CYPRESSES, POINT LOBOS 240

OLD CYPRESSES ON THE SEVENTEEN-MILE DRIVE, MONTEREY 244

CHURCH AND CEMETERY, SAN JUAN BAUTISTA 252

A LAKE COUNTY BYWAY 284

ON THE SLOPES OF MT. ST. HELENA 290

SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA 328

RUINS OF LA PURISIMA 332

A ROAD THROUGH THE REDWOODS 338

MAPS

ROAD MAP OF CALIFORNIA 374

On Sunset Highways

I

A MOTOR PARADISE

California! The very name had a strange fascination for me ere I set foot on the soil of the Golden State. Its romantic story and the enthusiasm of those who had made the (to me) wonderful journey to the favored country by the great ocean of the West had interested and delighted me as a child, though I thought of it then as some dim, far-away El Dorado that lay on the borders of fairyland. My first visit was not under circumstances tending to dissolve the spell, for it was on my wedding trip that I first saw the land of palms and flowers, orange groves, snowy mountains, sunny beaches, and blue seas, and I found little to dispel the rosy dreams I had preconceived. This was long enough ago to bring a great proportion of the growth and progress of the state within the scope of my own experience. We saw Los Angeles, then an aspiring town of forty thousand, giving promise of the truly metropolitan city it has since become; Pasadena was a straggling village; and around the two towns were wide areas of open country now teeming with ambitious suburbs. We visited never-to-be-forgotten Del Monte and saw the old San Francisco ere fire and quake had swept away its most distinctive and romantic features—the Nob Hill palaces and old-time Chinatown.

Some years intervened between this and our second visit, when we found the City of the Angels a thriving metropolis with hundreds of palatial structures and the most perfect system of interurban transportation to be found anywhere, while its northern rival had risen from debris and ashes in serried ranks of concrete and steel. A tour of the Yosemite gave us new ideas of California's scenic grandeur; there began to dawn on us vistas of the endless possibilities that the Golden State offers to the tourist and we resolved on a longer sojourn at the first favorable opportunity.

A week's stay in Los Angeles and a free use of the Pacific Electric gave us a fair idea of the city and its lesser neighbors, but we found ourselves longing for the country roads and retired nooks of mountain and beach inaccessible by railway train and tram car. We felt we should never be satisfied until we had explored this wonderland by motor—which the experience of three long tours in Europe had proved to us the only way to really see much of a country in the limits of a summer vacation.

And so it chanced that a year or two later we found ourselves on the streets of Los Angeles with our trusty friend of the winged wheels, intent on exploring the nooks and corners of Sunset Land. We wondered why we had been so long in coming—why we had taken our car three times to Europe before we brought it to California; and the marvel grew on us as we passed out of the streets of the city on to the perfect boulevard that led through green fields to the western Venice by the sea. It is of the experience of the several succeeding weeks and of a like tour during the two following years that this unpretentious chronicle has to deal. And my excuse for inditing it must be that it is first of all a chronicle of a motor car; for while books galore have been written on California by railroad and horseback travelers as well as by those who pursued the leisurely and good old method of the Franciscan fathers, no one, so far as I know, has written of an extended experience at the steering wheel of our modern annihilator of distance.

It seems a little strange, too, for Southern California is easily the motorist's paradise over all other places on this mundane sphere. It has more cars to the population—twice over—and they are in use a greater portion of the year than in any other section of similar size in the world and probably more outside cars are to be seen on its streets and highways than in any other locality in the United States. The matchless climate and the ever-increasing mileage of fine roads, with the endless array of places worth visiting, insure the maximum of service and pleasure to the fortunate owner of a car, regardless of its name-plate or pedigree. The climate needs no encomiums from me, for is it not heralded and descanted upon by all true Californians and by every wayfarer, be his sojourn ever so brief?—but a few words on the wonders already achieved in road-building and the vast plans for the immediate future will surely be of interest. I am conscious that any data concerning the progress of California are liable to become obsolete overnight, as it were, but if I were to confine myself to the unchanging in this vast commonwealth, there would be little but the sea and the mountains to write about.

Los Angeles County was the leader in good roads construction and at the time of which I write had completed about three hundred and fifty miles of modern highway at a cost of nearly five million dollars. I know of nothing in Europe superior—and very little equal—to the splendid system of macadam boulevards that radiate from the Queen City of the Southwest. The asphalted surface is smooth and dustless and the skill of the engineer is everywhere evident. There are no heavy grades; straight lines or long sweeping curves prevail throughout. Added to this is a considerable mileage of privately constructed road built by land improvement companies to promote various tracts about the city, one concern alone having spent more than half a million dollars in this work. Further additions are projected by the county and an excellent maintenance plan has been devised, for the authorities have wisely recognized that the upkeep of these splendid roads is a problem equal in importance with building them. This, however, is not so serious a matter as in the East, owing to the absence of frost, the great enemy of roads of this type.

Since the foregoing paragraph was first published (1915) the good work has gone steadily on and despite the sharp check that the World War administered to public enterprises, Los Angeles County has materially added to and improved her already extensive mileage of modern roads. A new boulevard connects the beach towns between Redondo and Venice; a marvelous scenic road replaces the old-time trail in Topango Canyon and the new Hollywood Mountain Road is one of the most notable achievements of highway engineering in all California. Many new laterals have been completed in the level section about Downey and Artesia and numerous boulevards opened in the foothill region. Besides all this the main highways have been improved and in some cases—as of Long Beach Boulevard—entirely rebuilt. In the city itself there has been vast improvement and extension of the streets and boulevards so that more than ever this favored section deserves to be termed the paradise of the motorist.

San Diego County has set a like example in this good work, having expended a million and a half on her highways and authorized a bond issue of two and one-half millions more, none of which has been as yet expended. While the highways of this county do not equal the model excellence of those of Los Angeles County, the foundation of a splendid system has been laid. Here the engineering problem was a more serious one, for there is little but rugged hills within the boundaries of the county. Other counties are in various stages of highway building; still others have bond issues under consideration—and it is safe to say that when this book comes from the press there will not be a county in Southern California that has not begun permanent road improvement on its own account.

I say "on its own account" because whatever it may do of its own motion, nearly every county in the state is assured of considerable mileage of the new state highway system, now partially completed, while the remainder is under construction or located and surveyed. The first bond issue of eighteen million dollars was authorized by the state several years ago, a second issue of fifteen millions was voted in 1916, and another of forty millions a year later, making in all seventy-three millions, of which, at this writing, thirty-nine millions is unexpended. Counties have issued about forty-two millions more. It is estimated that to complete the full highway program the state must raise one hundred millions additional by bond issues.

The completed system contemplates two great trunk lines from San Diego to the Oregon border, one route roughly following the coast and the other well inland, while lateral branches are to connect all county seats not directly reached. Branches will also extend to the Imperial Valley and along the Eastern Sierras as far as Independence and in time across the Cajon Pass through the Mohave Desert to Needles on the Colorado River. California's wealth of materials (granite, sand, limestone, and asphaltum) and their accessibility should give the maximum mileage for money expended. This was estimated by a veteran Pittsburgh highway contractor whom I chanced to meet in the Yosemite, at fully twice as great as could be built in his locality for the same expenditure.

California was a pioneer in improved roads and it is not strange that mistakes were made in some of the earlier work, chiefly in building roadways too narrow and too light to stand the constantly increasing heavy traffic. The Automobile Club of Southern California, in conjunction with the State Automobile Association, recently made an exhaustive investigation and report of existing highway conditions which should do much to prevent repetition of mistakes in roads still to be built. The State Highway Commission, while admitting that some of the earlier highways might better have been built heavier and wider, points out that this would have cut the mileage at least half; and also that at the time these roads were contracted for, the extent that heavy trucking would assume was not fully realized. Work on new roads was generally suspended during the war and is still delayed by high costs and the difficulty of selling bonds.

At this writing (1921) the two trunk lines from San Diego to San Francisco are practically completed and the motorist between these points, whether on coast or inland route, may pursue the even tenor of his way over the smooth, dustless, asphalted surface at whatever speed he may consider prudent, though the limit of thirty-five miles now allowed in the open country under certain restrictions leaves little excuse for excessive speeding. It is not uncommon to make the trip over the inland route, about six hundred and fifty miles, in three days, while a day longer should be allowed for the coast run.

In parts where the following narrative covers our tours made before much of the new road was finished, I shall not alter my descriptions and they will afford the reader an opportunity of comparing the present improved highways with conditions that existed only yesterday, as it were.

Road improvement has been active in the northern counties for several years, especially around San Francisco. I have gone into the details concerning this section in my book on Oregon and Northern California, and will not repeat the matter here, since the scope of this work must be largely confined to the south. It is no exaggeration, however, to say that to-day California is unsurpassed by any other state in mileage and excellence of improved roads and when the projects under way are carried out she will easily take first rank in these important particulars unless more competition develops than is now apparent. Thus she supplies the first requisite for the motor enthusiast, though some may declare her matchless climate of equal advantage to the tourist.