Central Coast · CA
Big Sur
Seventy-one miles where the Santa Lucias fall into the sea.
- Year-round residents
- About 1,800–2,000
- Highway finished
- 1937
- Visitors a year
- 4.5–7 million
Then
- 3500 BC
The Esselen are living in Big Sur.
- Spanish era
The Spanish call it el país grande del sur, the big country of the south.
- 1937
The Carmel–San Simeon Highway is finished after 18 years of work.
- 1944
Henry Miller moves here and stays nearly two decades.
- 2017
The Mud Creek slide buries the highway. It reopens in July 2018.
Now
Landslides have closed Highway 1 more than 55 times. About 60 percent of the coast is protected from development.
The tide station here is at Mansfield Cone, on the southern Big Sur coast.