Highway 1: The North Coast
Two hundred and fifteen miles of two-lane coast from the Golden Gate to Leggett — Muir Woods and the San Andreas rift, Point Reyes, the Russian River mouth, Salt Point's quarried cove, the Sea Ranch, Point Arena and the lumber headlands of Mendocino and Fort Bragg.
The Route at a Glance
The Coast Miwok held the shore from the Golden Gate to Bodega Bay, and the Kashaya Pomo and other Pomo peoples the coast beyond it, and most of what this road passes was theirs long before it was a ranch, a mill or a park. Highway 1 north of the bridge drives like what it is: two lanes, few straight miles, and an average speed that works out to under forty miles an hour.
The first hour is Marin. The road climbs the shoulder of Mount Tamalpais, passes the turn for Muir Woods, and comes out high over the ocean at the Muir Beach Overlook. Past Stinson Beach it runs straight up the San Andreas rift, with Bolinas Lagoon and then Tomales Bay filling the fault trough beside it. The Earthquake Trail near Olema shows how far the ground moved in 1906, and Kule Loklo is a short walk from it. The Point Reyes peninsula is a long detour west and worth a day of its own: the lighthouse set below the fog, the cypress tunnel at Coast Station KPH, and the elk country at Tomales Point.
North of Bodega Bay the road meets the Russian River at Jenner, where Goat Rock still shows the bite quarried out of it for a jetty that never worked. Then it climbs onto the cliffs. Salt Point is where some of San Francisco's paving stone came from, and the Sea Ranch is ten miles of meadow and cypress hedgerow planned as a town. Over the Gualala River the road enters Mendocino County, and just short of Point Arena a trail drops to Bowling Ball Beach, which shows its stones only at low tide. Beyond the town, the Stornetta lands were the first piece of the coastal national monument that visitors could walk on.
The Mendocino stretch is the lumber coast. Mills and loading chutes stood at creek mouths all along it, and the town of Mendocino began because a salvage trip after a shipwreck found redwoods instead; the wreck lies just up the road at Point Cabrillo. A mile past Caspar, Jug Handle walks up five ancient beaches. Fort Bragg has the Skunk Train depot downtown and Glass Beach on the bluffs where the town's dumps were.
North of Westport the houses thin out. The road holds the cliffs a few miles longer, then turns inland at Rockport and climbs over the ridge, about twenty miles of curves through second-growth forest, to end at Leggett on US-101.
Allow two days if you mean to stop. Fog can sit on this coast all day in summer; the clearest weather often comes in fall.
The Drive, Stop by Stop
16 stops along the route, in driving order from Golden Gate Bridge, Marin County to Leggett, California. 2 of them sit off the road itself — the distance is noted on each.
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That's the drive. Take your time, pull over often, and let Highway 1: The North Coast do what it does best.
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