Mulholland Drive is a street and road in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. It is named after Los Angeles pioneer civil engineer William Mulholland. The western rural portion in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties is named Mulholland Highway.
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The mostly two-lane, minor arterial road loosely follows the ridgeline of the eastern Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills, connecting two sections of U.S. Route 101, and crossing Sepulveda Boulevard, Beverly Glen Boulevard, Coldwater Canyon, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Nichols Canyon Road and Outpost Drive. The road offers spectacular views of the Los Angeles Basin, the San Fernando Valley and the Hollywood Sign.
Mulholland Drive is home to some of the most exclusive and most expensive homes in the world. Many of these homes are set back from the road and offer outstanding views of Downtown Los Angeles. Celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Paris Hilton, Reese Witherspoon and Robbie Williams all live nearby.
The eastern terminus of Mulholland Drive is at its intersection with Cahuenga Boulevard at the Cahuenga Pass over the Santa Monica Mountains (at this point Cahuenga Boulevard runs parallel to Hwy 101—Hollywood Freeway). The road continues to the west offering vistas of the Hollywood Sign, downtown Los Angeles, and then Burbank, Universal City and the rest of the San Fernando Valley with the San Gabriel, Verdugo, and Santa Susana Mountains.
The road winds along the top of the mountains until a few miles west of the 405 Freeway (San Diego Freeway). Just west of the intersection with Encino Hills Drive, it becomes an unpaved road not open to motor vehicles. This part is known by many as "Dirt Mulholland"--popular with hikers, horseback riders, and mountain bikers--and an issue to developers and preservationists. It offers connections to other unpaved fire roads and mountain bike trails as well as a decommissioned Project Nike command post that has been turned into a Cold War memorial park.
The paved road begins again east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, at Santa Maria Road. Shortly thereafter, Mulholland Drive splits into Mulholland Drive and Mulholland Highway. Mulholland Drive terminates at Hwy 101 (Ventura Freeway), where it becomes Valley Circle Boulevard. Mulholland Highway continues to the southwest until it terminates at State Route 1 (PCH) in Leo Carrillo State Park at the Pacific Ocean coast and the border of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.
The main portion of the road, from the Cahuenga Pass in Hollywood westward past the Sepulveda Pass was originally called 'Mulholland Highway' and was opened in 1924. It was built by a consortium of Hollywood Hills landowners investing to make money by bringing development to the Hollywood Hills.
Mulholland Drive is a painting by David Hockney.
King of the Mountain was a movie loosely based on actual Mulholland Drive racers, racing to be king of the hill. The 1981 movie stars Dennis Hopper, Harry Hamlin, Seymour Cassel and Dan Haggerty.
Mulholland Drive, a 2001 neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch, was named after the road. The 1996 film Mulholland Falls is about this street during the 1950s.
The events described in the spoken portions of the Poe song "Hey Pretty" take place on Mulholland Drive. These scenes are an excerpt from the singer's brother's (Mark Z. Danielewski) 2000 novel House of Leaves.
The video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which features a close copy of the city of Los Angeles, includes Mulholland Drive in a form closely resembling the real road. There is also a large highway in the game, connecting the city with nearby counties, named Mulholland Intersection. Midnight Club: Los Angeles, another video game, features a shortened version of Mulholland Drive.
Mulholland Drive inspired (and is mentioned in) the R.E.M. song "Electrolite".
The narrator of the Tom Petty hit song "Free Fallin" describes how he wants to "glide down over Mulholland".
A ride at Disneyland's Disney California Adventure Park is called "Mulholland Madness" (previously "Mulholland Highway").
The Mulholland Drive Dog is a kind of hot dog at Pink's Hot Dogs in Los Angeles, referencing Lynch's film Mulholland Drive. A scene in the movie took place at Pink's, and the dog's description on the menu is "a 10-inch STRETCH dog", with "stretch" capitalized, since a critical part of the film revolves around a stretch limousine driving up Mulholland Drive.
In the classic computer game Street Rod 2, Mulholland Drive is one of the races the player can pick for a pink slips or cash race.
In the movie Love & Basketball, Mulholland Drive is referred to during the scene in which Q and Monica meet up outside of her bedroom after the Spring Dance. It marks the street as a dead end where couples go for privacy.
Mentioned and shown in Adam-12.
In the TV series 90210, the character of Annie Wilson is part of a hit and run "on Mulholland". In the 1991 episode "The Sleepover" of the series Beverly Hills 90210, the character of Kelly Taylor mentions being driven up to the woods by Mulholland, where she lost her virginity to an upperclassmen on the football team.
Mulholland Drive is mentioned in "You and Tequila", a song co-written by Matraca Berg and Deana Carter. It was recorded by Kenny Chesney for his 2010 album Hemingway's Whiskey, and released in May 2011 as the album's fourth single. Chesney's version of the song features a guest vocal from Grace Potter, lead singer of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.