Big Sur Southbound

Carmel may be the only city in America where the mayor's signature accomplishment was legalizing ice cream cones.

You're approaching Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, where in 1960 California established one of the nation's first underwater protected areas.

You're driving through Carmel Highlands, one of the most geologically active coastal margins in North America.

You're driving on one of the most expensive roads per mile ever built in the United States.

You're crossing Bixby Creek Bridge, and here's what makes it remarkable beyond the view.

The dark mound rising from the coastline ahead is Point Sur, a volcanic remnant of hardened basalt that formed around 25 million years ago.

You're passing through Andrew Molera State Park, which sits on land that was once part of Rancho El Sur, a nearly nine-thousand-acre Mexican land grant issued in 1834 to…

Henry Miller arrived here in 1944 nearly broke, and stayed eighteen years.

Orson Welles bought a log cabin on this ridge in 1944 as a wedding gift for Rita Hayworth. They never actually lived here.

You're driving through one of the most geologically active strips of coastline in North America.

McWay Falls is one of only two waterfalls in California that drop directly onto an ocean beach. The other is Alamere Falls in Point Reyes.

The hot springs at this location have been used for at least six thousand years.

This stretch of Highway One between Esalen and Lucia is among the most geologically unstable coastline in North America.

The New Camaldoli Hermitage sits about 1,400 feet above the ocean on this mountainside, home to a small community of Benedictine monks who follow the Camaldolese order —…

You're passing near four massive stone kilns that have stood in this redwood canyon since the 1880s.

You're driving along one of the most active geological boundaries in California.

The flat ground you're crossing right now is a geological oddity.

In 1971, divers pulled a single nephrite jade boulder weighing nine thousand pounds from the ocean floor just off these cliffs.

This stretch of Highway One between Gorda and Ragged Point is among the most geologically unstable road corridors in North America.

You're passing through Ragged Point, which sits at roughly 300 feet elevation right where the Santa Lucia Mountains finally drop away and the coastline transitions from…

San Simeon Bay, just ahead, was a working whaling station in the 1860s and 70s.

This colony represents one of the most dramatic wildlife recoveries in modern history.

The hilltop you can see inland is La Cuesta Encantada — the Enchanted Hill — where William Randolph Hearst spent twenty-eight years building a 165-room estate that was…