To better accommodate Pasadena-bound traffic for the Rose Bowl two days later, the state dedicates California’s first “freeway,” the Arroyo Seco Parkway on December 30, 1940. Not only is the 8.2 mile highway linking downtown Los Angeles with Pasadena the state’s first high-speed divided road with onramps and off-ramps, it’s also the first “freeway” to be built in the urban Western United States. The parkway serves as a prototype for future super highways.
(Stanford beats the Nebraska Cornhuskers 21 to 13 on January 1, 1941.)
At 9:30 a.m. on December 30, a 474-automobile caravan of dignitaries and others involved with the project as well as 60 pieces of armored military equipment leave the Los Angeles Civic Center for the 10:15 a.m. opening ceremony.
Prior to the ceremony, five Native American leaders, including Chief Tahachwee of the Kawie, the tribe that once lived in the Arroyo, smoke a 150-year-old “pipe of peace” with the state’s director of Public Works, to celebrate the transfer of the Native American lands to “modern progress.”
An estimated 1,500 people attend the nationally broadcast opening ceremony at which Gov. Culbert Olson keynotes.
At 11:35 a.m., Rose Queen Sally Stanton and Gov. Olson cut the chain of roses strung across the parkway.
The Democratic governor tells the crowd:
“It is proper and timely for us to pause a few moments to ceremonialize and celebrate an achievement so extraordinary as the completion of this, the Arroyo Seco Parkway. Now that we have it, and it all looks so rather simple, so obviously necessary, so wholly practical, some will ask, ‘What is there so wonderful, or so bold about it?’ Oh yes–but it takes courage to do a thing the first time, no matter how simple and obvious it may appear after it is done. And this, fellow citizens, is the first freeway in the West. It is only the first. And that is its great promise to the future–the promise of many more freeways to come.”
The possibility of a roadway along the dry riverbed from Pasadena to Los Angeles is explored as early as the late 1890s. The route is finally selected in 1936 and construction begins in 1938.
As originally designed, the parkway has two lanes in either direction, the inside passing lanes paved in black concrete and the outer ones in gray to help drivers stay in their lanes. Shoulders on either side contained in the initial project design are ultimately abandoned to increase capacity.
Total cost: $5.75 million.
The parkway, a State Scenic Highway and a National Scenic Byway, remains largely unchanged from its original configuration. On-ramps and off-ramps are still exceedingly tight, requiring swift acceleration from 5-miles-per-hour to 55-miles-per-hour or similarly quick braking. A guardrail has replaced the plants that once graced the median, however. Although engineered to accommodate 27,000 vehicles traveling at 45 miles-per-hour, volume now is closer to 122,000 each day. In part, that’s because despite its outmoded design, the roadway remains the fastest route between Pasadena and Los Angeles.