Big Sur takes its name from el país grande del sur — the Spanish “big country of the south,” below the old capital at Monterey.
The road changed everything, slowly. California approved the Carmel–San Simeon Highway in 1919, and crews began cutting the roadbed into the cliffs in 1921 — then ran out of money at the end of 1924, and did not resume until March 1928, this time with convict labor from three San Quentin road camps strung along the coast at Little Sur River, Kirk Creek, and Anderson Creek. The men earned thirty-five cents a day and a day off their sentences per two worked. Crews building from the north and south met on September 18, 1934, and the finished highway opened in June 1937 — eighteen years, start to finish, for ninety miles of road.
Why People Visit Big Sur California
- Stop at the Bixby Creek Bridge — the 1932 open-spandrel concrete arch, 714 feet long and 280 feet high, and the most photographed point on the Big Sur coast. Note that a county no-parking zone took effect around the bridge in August 2026 — use the designated pullouts and never stop on the span.
- See McWay Falls in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park — an eighty-foot waterfall that drops straight onto a cove beach below Highway 1.
- Walk among the coast redwoods at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, and find the purple-tinted sand at Pfeiffer Beach just down the road.
- Tour Point Sur Lighthouse — the 1889 light station on a volcanic rock dome rising from the sea.
- Hike the bluffs and canyons of Garrapata, Andrew Molera, and Limekiln state parks, and into the Ventana Wilderness in Los Padres National Forest.
- Watch for sea otters in the kelp, gray whales offshore in winter and spring, and California condors riding the updrafts over the cliffs.
- Drive the full Carmel–San Simeon stretch of Highway 1 — the ninety-mile coast road where the Santa Lucia Mountains meet the Pacific.
