Golden State Freeway

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Signed as

Major cities/towns:	Lebec Gorman Santa Clarita Sylmar San Fernando Mission Hills Pacoima Arleta Panorama City Sun Valley Burbank Glendale Atwater Village Glassell Park Cypress Park Lincoln Heights Boyle Heights
Direction:	North-South

Southern California freeways

Interstate 5; the Golden State Freeway is highlighted in red, the Santa Ana Freeway is highlighted in purple, and the San Diego Freeway is highlighted in blue.

The Golden State Freeway is a north-south freeway running through Kern County and Los Angeles County, California. Originally built as U.S. Highway 99, it was re-signed as Interstate 5 in 1964.

1 The Route
2 Legal definition
3 Earthquakes and the Golden State Freeway
4 Control cities
5 Communities
6 Connecting freeways

[edit] The Route

I-5 and California State Highway 99 converge near the southernmost point of the San Joaquin Valley, approximately 30 miles (50 km) south of Bakersfield. At this point, the Golden State Freeway begins. It travels southward through the valley until sharply rising to cross the Tejon Pass through the Tehachapi Mountains, continuing through Grapevine Canyon. Path 26 power lines, a southern extension of Path 15, follow the freeway across the pass and onto Pyramid Lake. At one point along the treacherous route, the separated northbound and southbound lanes actually invert, with the southbound lanes being to the east of the northbound ones. The freeway continues into the Santa Clarita Valley, and then crosses Newhall Pass through the Santa Susana Mountains to enter the San Fernando Valley, and in turn, Los Angeles. Several major freeways split from the Golden State Freeway within a few miles of this point: the Foothill Freeway near Sylmar, the San Diego Freeway in Mission Hills, and the Hollywood Freeway in Sun Valley. Traveling through the cities of Burbank and Glendale, it closely follows the Los Angeles River as it skirts the Hollywood Hills. It ends at the East Los Angeles Interchange in Boyle Heights; I-5 continues thereafter as the Santa Ana Freeway.

While the former surface street portions of California State Route 99 are often named the Golden State Highway or Golden State Avenue, Highway 99 itself is not called the Golden State Freeway.

[edit] Legal definition

Route 5 from Junction 5/10/60/101 to Route 14. [Metropolitan Transportation Engineering Board (2/28/58)]

Source: 2004 Named Freeways, Highways, Structures and Other Appurtenances in California (PDF)

Note: The segment from California State Highway 14 to Highway 99 is still legally unofficial.

[edit] Earthquakes and the Golden State Freeway

On February 9, 1971, the Sylmar earthquake destroyed a portion of the Golden State Freeway, including its interchange (then under construction) with the Antelope Valley Freeway, between the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valleys. It was soon rebuilt with greater seismic reinforcement, but nevertheless sustained heavy damage in the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake (and had to be rebuilt again).

The risk of earthquake damage to the freeway remains high, as the Grapevine route crosses the notorious San Andreas Fault. The risk along this route is such that the proposed high-speed rail corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco, originally planned to be built within the Golden State Freeway's alignment, will instead veer east into the Antelope Valley, going through the cities of Palmdale and Lancaster before traversing the more seismically stable Tehachapi Pass on its way to Bakersfield. Despite adding over 50 miles (80 km) of line to the railroad and 20 minutes to its travel time, the route change will save billions of dollars in construction costs, as Tehachapi Pass presents relatively few engineering challenges.