Giant chunk of California’s Highway 1 collapses 

It will now be designated Hwy 3/4.

My father was a civil engineer for Caltrans years ago and he said the Pacific Coast Highway 1 was an engineering disaster.

Yeah..... those roads close to the coast are always scary and beautiful at the same time!

Bridges to the east Highways to the west Here i am in the middle complaining about potholes

California's coastline is mostly cliffs and palisades composed of UNConsolidated sand, pebbles, rocks, boulders and a tiny bit of ground cover. These have been eroding and collapsing into the surf for THOUSANDS of years. People who built beautiful mansions on meadows overlooking the highway and the beaches in the 40s and 50s saw their manicured lawns disappear, crumbling away in chunks and bites over less than two decades. Some homeowners tried to shore up their homes with huge cantilevered steel girders, and got another few years before they had to be condemned and abandoned. The Pacific swells gnaw at the beautiful palisades relentlessly. Pitilessly. It would be fascinating to know how many real estate brokers grew rich selling these disappearing properties to the unwary.

At 656 miles, it is the longest state route in California, and the second-longest in the US. This was a tiny tiny piece of it. It’s a beautiful drive.

Not the first time, won't be the last . . .

"Let's build a road on the edge of an eroding cliff" Everyone: "YEAHH!!"

that is a tiny piece compared to the slide that closed the highway for a year.

No joke, i hiked around the side of that cliff that fell off! I parked on the opposite side of the chunk. Crazy that the part i explored is now gone. Im a lucky idiot.

I really don’t think the hill wants that part of hwy 1 to be there

I love that drive, but if there was ever a road that had absolutely no reason to exist its Hwy 1.

Cliffs eroded by water eventually do change their shapes and volumes. Cliffs that have vehicle traffic as well as water shaking them up do too. It is a natural occurrence.

That had to be scary to be the first to drive up and discover this.

Man I am so lucky that it didn't collapse while I was on it 23 years ago! Talk about a close call!

That's just normal for that Coastline.

I drove up this highway heading up to Carmel-by-the-Sea a few years ago. I kept saying to my daughter...I am so glade I am on this side of the road and not the Ocean side. It was a beautiful drive💙

Thats not a small chunk, holy cow.

Isn't it funny how a couple of rubber cones is the only thing keeping a car from driving into certain death. What happens when fog, rain, darkness rolls in.

That made me queasy looking at it from my chair in my living room! 😱

Not even on one of Gavin's list of top 100 problems with California.

Back in 99 while working for a DC area company, I was sent to Morro Bay for a temporary job at Los Osos. I took my rental car up Hwy 1 to check out the sea lions at Big Sur n admire the Hearst castle from afar, drove up to as far as Monterey n drove back. Also, in 2019, i took the wife on a nice drive along Hwy 1 on our honeymoon from LA to SF, starting in Dallas. Very beautiful scenic drive that i hope isn’t lost forever, but I know it will be soon lost forever among other things in this world. Remember that Jesus saves from the second death. Maranatha! 🙏✝️

Oregon’s coastal Hwy 101 is doing the same thing in multiple places.

The state of california is falling apart quite literally In more ways than one 🤨

The amount of land missing under that portion makes me think this was going on for a while and nobody noticed.

People never know how close they come to catastrophic events involving bridges.

That's nothinf special, roads along high erosion waters often have failures like this due to the soil supporting the road being swept away little by little over years or by severe weather

Man says, "We shall build a highway." Earth says, "Go ahead. Make my day!"

My husband and I used to live about a mile from there. He had to travel that stretch of highway everyday to get to the site where he was stationed. The stripes were always being repainted. I even saw the rooftops of houses that had slide down. Like one person commented, it was beautiful but scary. I hope everyone stays safe. 🙏✝️❤️🌹

Wait till the big one comes

Happens all the time... Land slides, roads collapsing into the ocean.. fun night driving

My golly, that road REALLY IS as dangerous as it looks!!!!!!

I'm surprised this highway stays open.

Another big coastal storm this weekend. Probably not going to help the situation.

Wasn't Highway 1 built almost 100 years ago? From a quick google, it seems like roads are supposed to last 18-30 years depending on driving conditions and if it's resealed every 10 years. So I'd say Highway 1 has more than done it's job.

Can’t believe there’s a highway built on that wearing-away hillside. Humans are so sure of themselves.

Not religious, but this reminds me of that passage about building your home on rock instead of sand (or whatever it says.)

It looks like those cliffs have been coming out from under the roadway for awhile.

We can repair it with some asphalt and Newsomes hair gel. 😎

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!

Every year or 3 for this highway. Seems they would up the engineering.

It's like all these highly populated areas keep neglecting the roads for other silly projects.

California builds all their roads on unstable ground, both along the coast and through the mountains. The next blocked or lost road is just a rainstorm or earthquake away.

Big Sur is one giant area waiting to collapse

Guess what guys………you’re too close to the edge.

Happens all the time in Oregon nobody puts it on national television.

went down this highway as a kid in 68 or so pretty. San Simeon, etc.

This entire stretch of highway looks like engineering hubris.

You can stop fire, but you can't stop water.

Beachfront property world-wide is about to rezone itself dramatically.

Someone’s made a nice living repairing that highway year round

In other news, you get 20 bucks an hour to fry French freis.

I would ride from San Francisco to L.A. on Highway 1 to visit my sister and I always feared that a section of the highway would fall off while I was passing.

That's not going to be easy to fix, they are going to have to move that road inland.

I haven’t been able to drive all the way down the coast for years. It’s constantly closed. That road is gonna need to rebuilt.

In the mid to early 1980's the Big Sur Hwy collapsed both lanes and all the phone lines were buried along the road. I was working for ATT at the time. My job was to go south to on Hwy 101 into Ft. Hunter Legit and drive my ladder truck over Nacimiento Fergusson Rd to Hwy 1 and prepare the cables to re- connected. I stayed at the Lucia Lodge.

If they insist on a road there, certainly there is something that could be done to hinder the erosion.

Oh no here comes they need more of our money

Build back better they told us 🙄

Who woulda thunk?

Such a Beautiful coastal drive

By the looks of it, the road needed to be maintained better, but you know where California tax money goes😂

So what else is new? Been occurring since day 1. What else expect building hwy on eroding cliffs next to an ocean?! Don’t call it devil’s slide (actually that’s a portion farther north near Pacifica) for nothing!

Even the highway is leaving Newsoms California.

Unless I'm mistaken, the section with the bite out of it, as shown in the video, is directly south of the Rocky Creek Bridge. No?

California will probably need around 15 Billion dollars to fix the road and thats to start with. They will probably take at least 7 years to do all the impact studies involved before they actually do any work. After the 7 years and another 15 Billion California will probably just build a new road close to the old road. Florida would rebuild the road in 3 months with about 6 million bucks lol.

WOW, Earth 🌎 is a living breathing system always changing.

Highway was recently vaccinated. So that may have something to do with this.

They should make a law banning natural erosion...

Looks like Hwy-1 is a goner..

Nothing new with highway 1? Part was gone a decade ago when I went to Hearst castle

Where has all the infrastructure money gone?

Luckily, with the high taxation the residents been paying all those years, the state will replace that section asap, right ?

The road is reflecting the government

That road should be considered impassable as it is completely undermined. Just about anything could take that section out.

It’s so gorgeous there in California. I’d be scared to travel this road though, but I want to.

There’s a lot of businesses,parks and people out of work because of this , there needs to be a quick solution .

Literally everyone saw this coming.

Is newsome going to claim this happened in Florida not California, too?

Drove on this road in 2012. Beautiful drive

Lady posted a prophetic dream three weeks ago about seeing bridges collapsing…

I live on Arkansas, the land of bridges, I see this on a regular basis

I can't help thinking while watching this --- if some piece of heavy machinery were to be driven along that lane, it and the entire rest of the lane that is hanging on would plummet to the sea.

My family and I went out on that highway 1, many times, to enjoy the great scenery, it will probably cost alot to fix it..but we loved the scenery of the ocean from this roadway,always, a different view, depending on the time of day- super sunsets, the ocean even gave a great reason to go through Highway 1...

Building anything on the edge is the dumbest thing ever.

Cannot understand the highways here, there’s a lot of space where the mountain is but they have to construct highways along the cliff! How smart is that and they know that the soil can erode so easily!

Sad,it is beautifull

This looks tough. Will they have to build a large cliff stack or carve out more of the cliff on the inland side?

Beautiful place. Hopefully they can find a way to make it safer in the future. Hopefully no one was injured.

Beautiful!

How in God's name does it seem okay to build a road right in the edge of a cliff?

Why are the roads built so close to the ocean!

How are we gonna play Need 4 Speed now

I was always told by my California peeps "someday this state will slide into the ocean," and so i moved back to Michigan

Got plenty of money for wars, but none for anything else.

Have driven that a few times a little scary at its best. Timber Cove south to Russian River is a great drive.

Bike toured this stretch of Highway 1 over three times, was radical for such amazing views and topography, it is shocking, but could not say I ever thought is was invincible. Hope no one was hurt by the event, very formidable.

OH, MY GOODNESS! How do you fix that??

When it was being built, they had to send crews on horseback to chop out brush, trees and try to make some type of road that a dozer could drive on. They used prisoners for labor, with one crew at each end, coming from Monterey and San Simeon. At one point one of the prison crews ran away. No worries, they came back three days later, hungry and bug bitten. They did not realize that they were in total wilderness, with no other humans in any direction for 50 miles.

“Chunks” PLURAL!! More is gone now than when I first saw it earlier!