OLD CUESTA ROAD–A photo from the California Division of Highways [now Caltrans] which once reported 71 hazardous curves on the highway north of San Luis Obispo. The road was built in 1915 and improved in 1923, the photo is from about 1922.
Something about the Cuesta Grade captures the imagination of readers. One of the popular pages in Vault is a Cuesta Grade accident photo from 1963. A quick web search shows interest in the pass from railroad and highway historians.
The railroad spanned the grade in the late 1800′s The automobile came a few years later. Stage Coach Road is the closest thing today to the original trail over the grade.
On September 12, 1965 an Elliot Curry story was published on the history and future of the Cuesta Grade. [A few paragraphs have been rearranged and the story edited for length. The first part of the story talks about the highway department plans then delves into history. ]
The Cuesta has always been a formidable foe.
The first route over the pass was called the “Padre’s Trail” and it simply followed the bottom of the Canyon, dodging obstacles along the creek. The first county road over the pass was constructed with a $20,000 bond issue in 1876 and was called Cuesta Road. It followed the westerly slope and most of it is still there, but recommended only for daring drivers.
Before the coming of the railroad in the Nineties [1890's], much of the grain and wool from the north part of the county had to be hauled over the pass to San Luis Obispo and supplies for the ranches had to be hauled back over the torturous route.
For the big freight wagons, pulled by six or eight horses it was a day’s journey just to get over the grade. On leaving San Luis Obispo the first stop was the Waterfall saloon, built over San Luis Creek, near the start of the long climb. It was eight miles to Bean’s station at the foot of the grade on the north side and it took a good eight hours to make it.
Henry Twisselman, a pioneer of the Shandon country, always claimed to be the only man who ever drove a 12-horse team over the grade with three wagons hitched together–the ancestor of some of today’s truck and semi-trailer monsters.
The State Division of Highways office was organized in San Luis Obispo in 1912 and it soon came to grips with the Cuesta.
In the fall of 1914 contract No. 110 was let for a 24-foot roadbed and gravel surfacing on the easterly slope of the pass. Total cost was $58,771 and the surface was oiled in 1916 and maintained as such until 1922.
In 1922 curves were widened and a reinforced concrete pavement was put down with curbs along each side. Cost of this project was $169,166 and parts of the old pavement can still be glimpsed along the mountainside where it wound its way through 71 curves.
By 1936 the old paved route had become a traffic trap that could delay motorists by as much as half an hour. The state highway commission decided to make this one of the best mountain highways in the west and in the following two years they appropriated $945,000 for the job. Metropolitan Construction company built the four lane highway in 18 months.
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When the present grade was opened in 1938 it was called the third largest road building job in the west. Excavation involved 1,365,000 cubic yards of earth, considered a monumental task at that time. Today more earth than that is moved to build the Cayucos by-pass.
The Cuesta Grade crosses a pass in the Santa Lucia Mountains and whatever else they may be, these mountains are not “rock ribbed.” One of the biggest problems encountered in the construction was the instability of the mountainside where the mud deposits were sometimes 40 to 50 feet thick. The problem persisted for years at the Division V [Highway Dept.] engineers devised ways of draining the water out of a side hill which kept sliding toward the canyon bottom.
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Some of the most harrowing chapters in the history of Cuesta ended when the freeway was built through San Luis Obispo. When Highway 101 was still routed down Monterey Street, runaway trucks used to come screeching and honking through the city at 100-mile-an-hour speeds. In one of the last such episodes a truck raced along Monterey all the way to Nipomo [Street] and then took out the corner of a a building as it dived into San Luis Creek.
At the time there was a push to convert all of Highway 101 in the county from expressway into freeway, eliminating grade level access. That goal that eludes the road to this day.
The Cuesta was still using the 1930′s era bridge over the railroad within my driving career. The road has undergone at least two major face lifts since the mid-1960′s and many of the same issues bedevil drivers and road engineers.
And yes, the term Cuesta Grade is redundant. So is Morro Rock. Apparently boosters in the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce tried to get the name changed in the 1930′s to La Cuesta. Still waiting for that one to catch on.
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In 1936 the Cattaneo family drove from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco. The passengers in the 1929 DeSoto were my father (Bill), my mother (Mary), my maternal grandparents (Angelo and Luigia Piantanida), and my uncle Charles Cattaneo, who was 12 at the time. Two single concrete lanes constituted the highway over the Cuesta Grade at that time (one lane up and one down). I cannot recall the width of each lane, but they were narrow, perhaps 10 feet per lane. I was in the back seat with my uncle Charlie as we made our way up the Cuesta Grade. At one point an automobile passed us, heading south on the opposite lane. I will forever remember thinking that I could almost reach out and touch the passing car, so narrow were the lanes. Uncle Charlie later served in the U.S. Army with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma, and on his return from the service in 1945 joined San Luis Garbage Company.
Now I’m a bit terrified that a runaway truck will come screeching through downtown San Luis Obispo at 100 mph and run me over. Thanks for nothin’, Dave.
My family moved from Los Angeles to SLO on Oct. 31, 1953. I was seven years old. My father was already in SLO working, and my aunt had to drive the family up because my mother couldn’t drive. My mother cried all the way there because she had never lived in a small town, and I pouted all the way (crammed into the back seat with my three siblings) because I didn’t get to trick-or-treating. It was very late at night when we began to see signs that indicated that we were getting close. I woke up a little later to hear my mother saying to my aunt, “This can’t possibly be it — this town is too small.” Then we found ourselves climbing a steep incline, and at the top of the grade my mother realized we had driven right through San Luis Obispo. My aunt somehow managed to turn around and head back down in the dark of night. I will never forget that ride up the grade, and I will always be grateful that my father chose SLO to live in. It didn’t take long for my mother to feel the same way.
Growing up in Paso Robles in the 50′s and 60′s, we visited our grandmother in San Luis quite often. There was always a feeling of entering another world as our car finally topped the grade heading south. The scorching heat of the north county disappeared as the car whizzed down the scarey two-lane ribbon of road faster than the speed limit. Great place to pray by the way!
By the time we reached the bottom, the culture shift had grabbed our gut. We took a deep breath of marine air and knew it would be a wonderful visit.
My great grandparents owned the Waterfall Saloon at the foot of the cuesta grade in about 1890.
Ed
Thanks for the comment Ed. Do you have any tales the family told about the Waterfall Saloon?
No tales about the Waterfall. They were not there long.
In 1891 they were in Shandon, They owned the Shandon House Hotel.
Ed
my dad used to enjoy traveling up the “old” grade. i hated it! the curves always made me sick! still can’t go that way, bad memories. my uncle worked for pg&e up north and took us up to the tower a few times. AWW the good old days. thanks so much dave for bringing back so many memories good and bad. what a dude!