Road or highway · United States

How much did Big Sur Coast Highway cost to build?

The Big Sur Coast Highway is the historic coastal Highway 1 route linking Carmel and San Simeon across California's rugged central coast. Work on the original Carmel–San Simeon road began in the early 1920s, and the state dedicated the completed connection on 27 June 1937. Caltrans's corridor management plan gives about $8 million as the cost of constructing that original highway, while a Federal Highway Administration history rounds the historical outturn to $10 million; neither figure is a modern repair budget. The original road included masonry features and concrete arch bridges, among them the Bixby Creek Bridge shown in the photograph. Later sums for the Pitkins Curve rock shed, Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge and landslide repairs refer to separate interventions along the route, not to the original whole-highway construction.