Big Sur Northbound

Hearst Castle up on that hill was designed by Julia Morgan, the first woman to receive an architecture license in California and the first woman admitted to the…

The Piedras Blancas lighthouse ahead is one of the most altered lighthouses on the Pacific coast.

The land you're driving through right now was once part of the Rancho Piedra Blanca, a Mexican land grant from 1840 that covered over 48,000 acres.

This is the spot where California's coastline changes character entirely.

This seasonal double waterfall drops about 120 feet over exposed marine terrace sediments, layers of rock that formed underwater on the ocean floor.

The road you're on exists because of one of the steepest coastal mountain rises on the continent.

This stretch of coastline sits on some of the richest nephrite jade deposits in North America.

You're entering one of the southernmost stands of coast redwoods in the world. These trees exist here for one reason: fog.

These redwoods hide four massive stone kilns from the 1880s, built by the Rockland Lime and Lumber Company.

The mountains rising steeply beside you are geologically unusual.

McWay Falls is one of only two waterfalls in California that drop directly onto an ocean beach.

The trailhead you're passing leads to one of Big Sur's most unusual pieces of infrastructure — a sixty-foot tunnel hand-chiseled through solid granite in the 1880s by…

Nepenthe sits on a cliff eight hundred feet above the Pacific, and its history starts with Hollywood royalty.

Pfeiffer Beach has something you won't find on most coastlines anywhere in the world: purple sand.

You're now passing through Big Sur itself, though you might wonder where exactly the town is. That's the thing — Big Sur isn't really a town in any conventional sense.

The Cooper Cabin in this park is one of the oldest surviving structures on the Big Sur coast, built in 1861 by Henry Cooper, grandson of Juan Bautista Cooper, a sea…

Point Pinos Lighthouse, just ahead in Pacific Grove, is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast.

You're crossing Bixby Creek Bridge, one of the most photographed bridges in California and a landmark of Depression-era engineering.

You're passing Garrapata State Park at Soberanes Point, one of the most ecologically significant boundaries on the California coast.

You're now passing through the Carmel Highlands, where the granite of the Santa Lucia Range finally gives way to the sedimentary rocks of the Monterey Formation.

Carmel-by-the-Sea has no street addresses.