Pacific Coast Highway | A winding road to adventure.

Also known as Route 1 or Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway is the road of the American Dream, a U.S. route that offers beautiful views of the coast along the 620-mile road from Orange County (near Dana Point, south of Los Angeles) to Mendocino County (just above San Francisco, in Leggett), that covers almost the entire California coast.

A Pacific Coast Highway road trip passes through desolate moors and viewpoints that allow you to enjoy the rare and amazing natural beauty of the coast. The possibilities are endless but a common route is to take the coastal scenic route from Los Angeles to San Francisco (or vice versa), and often people extend the journey and continue south to San Diego, a city with beautiful beaches and pleasant temperatures.

But a road trip on Highway 1 doesn’t only offer unforgettable scenic views. Even history buffs will find something of interest. Along the Pacific Coast you will find the many Franciscan missions that were built in California starting the eighteenth century, all included in the historical itinerary El Camino Real. We start our Pacific Coast Highway itinerary from the south, from the beaches of Orange County, and will head north towards San Francisco Bay and beyond.

Length: 1,055 km
Constructed: 1934
South end: I-5 in Dana Point
Existed: 1934–present
North end: US 101 near Leggett
Major cities: San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica
Highway system: State highways in California, California State Highway System

The Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip

While many travelers begin in Los Angeles and head north, driving the Pacific Coast Highway from north to south keeps you in the lane closest to the ocean. In Washington, Oregon, and at the northern end of California, the Pacific Coast route follows US Highway 101. Near the small town of Leggett (home to the famed Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree) US-101 transitions into scenic Highway 1, the most popular portion of this route and the classic Coastal California road trip.

For some reason, when people elsewhere in the country refer to the Pacific Coast, particularly California, it’s apparent that they think it’s a land of kooks, an overbuilt suburban desert supporting only shopping malls, freeways, and body-obsessed airheads. All this may be true in small pockets, but the amazing thing about the Pacific Coast—from the dense green forests of western Washington to the gorgeous beaches of Southern California—is that it is still mostly wild, open, and astoundingly beautiful country, where you can drive for miles and miles and have the scenery all to yourself.

Planning a Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip

Road Trip USA’s Pacific Coast route begins at the northwest tip of the United States at Port Townsend near Olympic National Park, and remains within sight of the ocean almost all the way south to the Mexican border. This 1,650-mile (2,655 km), mostly two-lane route takes in everything from temperate rainforest to near-desert. Most of the Pacific Coast is in the public domain, accessible, and protected from development within national, state, and local parks, which provide habitat for such rare creatures as mountain lions, condors, and gray whales.

Heading south, after the rough-and-tumble logging and fishing communities of Washington State, you cross the mouth of the Columbia River and follow the comparatively peaceful and quiet Oregon coastline, where recreation has by and large replaced industry, and where dozens of quaint and not-so-quaint communities line the ever-changing shoreline. At the midway point, you pass through the great redwood forests of Northern California, where the tallest and most majestic living things on earth line the Avenue of the Giants, home also to some of the best (meaning gloriously kitsch) remnants of the golden age of car-borne tourism: drive-through trees, drive-on trees, houses carved out of trees, and much more. The phenomenally beautiful coast-line of Northern California is rivaled only by the incredible coast of Big Sur farther south, beyond which stretches the beachfronts of Southern California. The land of palm trees, beach boys, and surfer girls of popular lore really does exist, though only in the southernmost quarter of the state.

Along with the overwhelming scale of its natural beauty, the West Coast is remarkable for the abundance of well-preserved historic sites—most of which haven’t been torn down, built on, or even built around—that stand as vivid evocations of life on what was once the most distant frontier of a new nation. While rarely as old as places on the East Coast, or as impressive as those in Europe, these diverse sites include the Spanish colonial missions of California, Russian and English fur-trading outposts, and the place where Lewis and Clark first sighted the Pacific after their long slog across the continent.

Last but certainly not least are the energizing cities—Seattle and Portland in the north, San Francisco in the middle, and Los Angeles and San Diego to the south—that serve as gateways to (or civilized respites from) the landscapes between them. Add to these the dozens of small and not-so-small towns along the coast, with alternating blue-collar ports and up-scale vacation retreats, and you have a great range of food, drink, and accommodations options. Local cafés, seafood grills, and bijou restaurants abound, as do places to stay—from youth hostels in old lighthouses to roadside motels (including the world’s first, which still stands in lovely San Luis Obispo, California) to homespun B&Bs in old farmhouses.

10 Best Pacific Coast Highway Stops

For more insight into each stop along a West Coast road trip, our content is arranged by state, with California’s coastline broken into its northern, central, and southern sections. Here are ten major sights along the Pacific Coast Highway where travelers aiming to follow only a section of the full cross-country route may wish to use to plan their drive.