Mulholland Highway

Map of Mulholland Highway and Santa Monica Mountains.

Mulholland Highway and Mulholland Drive is a scenic road in Los Angeles County, California, that runs approximately 50 miles through the western Santa Monica Mountains from the near US Route 101 (Ventura Freeway) in Calabasas to Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) near Malibu at Leo Carrillo State Park and the Pacific Ocean coast - at the border of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties. Mulholland Highway is the western rural portion and with the eastern Mulholland Drive portion, is a scenic route named after William Mulholland and built throughout the 1920s "to take Angelenos from the city to the ocean".

Geography

The name Mulholland Highway applies to a thirty-mile stretch that starts near Louisville High School. Mulholland Highway formally begins in Calabasas, and extends to its westernmost terminus, at Leo Carrillo State Park, meeting Pacific Coast Highway. Wholly contained within Los Angeles County, the scenic byway was formally opened in 1928. Mulholland zigzags through the Santa Monica Mountains - one of the Southern California Transverse Ranges, from Oxnard all the way to Hollywood. Original major intersections included Topanga Road, Cornell Road, Latigo Canyon Road, and Decker Road.

The route provides access, directly or en route, to many of the regional parks in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Unlike Kanan-Dume Road and Malibu Canyon Road, Mulholland Highway makes its way through the mountains without benefit of tunnels. There are several automobile wrecks and fire-burnt structures that litter the bottom on the canyons through which Mulholland Highway passes. The native flora of the Santa Monica Mountains are seen throughout the scenic route.

Mulholland Highway and Drive

Sandstone Peak as seen from Mulholland Highway.

Curving ingeniously through the eastern Santa Monicas, the Mulholland Drive motorway once brought a heavy slew of Angelenos into the Valley. In the early 1970s, however, 5,000 local activists successfully prevented the cement paving of most of that stretch. To this day, that section is known as 'Dirt Mulholland', and is only open to cyclists and pedestrians. From the famous Mulholland Bridge east, Mulholland Drive completes its creator's vision, and winds through the affluent Hollywood Hills to Mulholland Drive's easternmost terminus at Cahuenga Boulevard, near Universal Studios, until again becoming an unpaved footpath to Griffith Park.

See also

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mulholland Drive & Highway.

Coordinates: 34°05′17″N 118°53′44″W / 34.08806°N 118.89556°W