The Long Way Home: Highway 1 Through Big Sur

Highway 1 runs the full length of the Big Sur coast again. The last major closure on the route, at Regent's Slide, reopened Feb. 20, 2026, restoring through travel between Cambria and Carmel for the first time since the slide shut the road Feb. 9, 2024, according to the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce.

Summer wildfires briefly closed the corridor a second time. The Timber and Plaskett fires burned steep terrain in and near the Los Padres National Forest in late August, and Caltrans lifted the northern Highway 1 closure at 6 a.m. Sept. 3, reopening the coast in time for Labor Day weekend.

What remains, for now, is a drive managed lane by lane. Caltrans reports one-way controlled traffic in effect 24 hours a day at Rocky Creek Bridge south of Carmel through 6 a.m. Nov. 30, and between Point Sur Lighthouse and just north of Big Sur village through the end of the year. Travelers continuing north into Mendocino County also meet one-way controls near Point Arena and at Westport.

Statewonderer map graphic: California highlighted within a red bounding box — State Wonderer · California. Locator map: The Anomebot at en.wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

The drive is the destination

The centerpiece of the coast road, Bixby Creek Bridge, is 714 feet long with a 360-foot arch span and 260 feet of clearance above the canyon. It opened Nov. 27, 1932, 13 miles south of Carmel, and was the longest concrete arch span in the California highway system at the time it was built.

Visitors should plan to drive the bridge rather than stop on it. Caltrans posted “no parking” signs at either end of the bridge on Aug. 4, 2026, launching a 12-month pilot approved by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to ease congestion and pedestrian hazards after years of cars parking over the fog line and people crossing the highway.

“It's a trip across an iconic bridge. It's not a destination,” Monterey County Supervisor Kate Daniels, who represents Big Sur, said this spring.

What the fires left behind

The Timber Fire burned about 25,352 acres and the Plaskett Fire about 30,124 acres, writes UC Santa Cruz ocean scientist Gary Griggs in the Mercury News. Burn scars raise the risk of landslides and debris flows when winter rain arrives.

Highway 1 has been shut down by landslides more than 55 times over the years, Griggs notes, and forecasters say a strong El Niño could bring heavy rain this winter. Caltrans and county crews are preparing the corridor for that possibility.

Before you go

Check Caltrans' QuickMap (roads.dot.ca.gov) and the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce Highway 1 conditions page the morning of your drive. One-way controls add short waits in both directions, weekends are the busiest, and the no-parking signs at Bixby Bridge are in effect through the pilot year.

The coast stays mild through fall, but rain can arrive any week from November onward, so keeping your dates flexible is the best plan for the long way home.