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Half Moon Bay Review This is the first of a three-part series on the history of Devil's Slide. As the vote on
Measure T approached in the fall of 1996, an air of inevitability pervaded the Think Tunnel campaign. An independent comparison between a tunnel and the Martini Creek bypass shot holes in the bypass and reaffirmed
the viability of the tunnel. Attempts to mount a campaign against Measure T fizzled, with two of the key players who had fought the tunnel abandoning their opposition. And throughout the county elected officials and
newspapers trumpeted a tunnel as the solution that would finally solve one of the longest-running and thorniest dilemmas in San Mateo County - how best to permanently repair the unstable stretch of Highway 1
across Devil's Slide. So when election night returns were announced at a tunnel campaign celebration showing that Measure T had passed by almost a 3-1 margin, the group erupted into a cheer of "Dig! Dig!
Dig!" foreshadowing what they believed would be speedy regulatory review and construction. Even the traditionally pro-bypass California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) could see the writing on the wall.
Just days after the countywide vote the agency announced it would "fast-track" approval and construction of a tunnel through San Pedro Mountain. Soon even the top administrator at CalTrans was predicting
that construction could be under way within a couple of years. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the passage of Measure T. But no ground has been broken. For more than two years CalTrans has awaited final
approval of the environmental impact report for the tunnel project. That action by the Federal Highways Administration sets in motion a 30-day period that precedes issuance of a "Record of Decision," in
essence the federal government's stamp of approval to break ground. The Record of Decision would mark a major milestone and would be the most significant action on the tunnel project since Election Day 1996,
further solidifying the tunnel as the project of record and preventing a resurrection of an inland bypass. But it has been repeatedly delayed month after month for two years. Groundbreaking on a tunnel is still at
least two years away and potential hurdles could delay the tunnel project longer - or still upend it altogether. So what happened to all that election-night momentum and the first leg of the "Sooner Safer
Cheaper" pro-tunnel motto? The delays have not been due to a lack of effort. An unusually attentive and broad-based group of roughly two-dozen people from government and the public, loosely affiliated as the
Devil's Slide Coordination Task Force, continues to meet regularly, nudging the project forward. But it has been subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny, both by the public demanding that it be part of the
decision-making process, and by state and federal officials well aware of Devil's Slide's litigious history. The one constant in the 41-year history of the many attempts to enact a long-term solution to the
sinking slab of asphalt along Devil's Slide is that any time frame to get something done there will be stretched to its limits or blown apart. Steve Taylor, a reporter for the Peninsula Times Tribune, which,
like many things, did not survive long enough to see completion of a permanent repair at Devil's Slide, attempted to put the issue into perspective in a 1985 article that is still applicable today: "History
offers this advice: Don't hold your breath." Zoe Kersteen-Tucker, spokeswoman for several environmental groups interested in the Devil's Slide issue and a prominent participant in the process since 1996,
recently offered a more positive assessment. She is firmly convinced the tunnel will be built in the near future. "I say 'Be patient. Good things take time.'" "Very poor road" Traveling
between the City of Pacifica and the unincorporated Mid-Coast of San Mateo County has never been easy. As far back as 1769 Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola, en route to discovering San Francisco Bay, climbed the
1,600 feet to the top of Montara Mountain and wrote in his diary, "Traveled two hours of very poor road uphill over a very high mountain, stoping (sic) on the height." In 1937, after three previous
automobile roads and one railroad across the mountain range had been abandoned, the current alignment was christened. It replaced Coastside Boulevard, known today as Old San Pedro Mountain Road, with a level highway
that to this day enables motorists to travel between Pacifica and the Mid-Coast in a matter of minutes - with occasional, maddening exceptions due to landslide-induced closures. But the steep inclines and more than
20 switchbacks on Old San Pedro Mountain Road that bedeviled motorists have been replaced by the politics of growth and the environment that have been just as difficult to navigate. Within weeks after the existing
road opened in 1937, the California Highways and Public Works Department acknowledged there were problems. Devil's Slide is a 4,000-foot-long section of Highway 1 between the communities of Linda Mar in the City of
Pacifica and unincorporated Montara. Near the middle for a length of about 1,000 feet is the active slide. This area is between 350 and 400 feet above the ocean. "It is anticipated that considerable trouble will be
experienced by our maintenance forces during the next two or three winters, in keeping the roadway clear of minor slides and the natural sloughing of material from the steep mountain slopes," the highways
department reported. But brushing a few rocks off the road soon gave way to the necessity of more involved maintenance to keep the road itself from falling toward the ocean. Four years after the new road opened it
was closed for 11 days because of slide movement. Other significant closures have included one in 1967 that lasted 15 days and one in 1980 that shut the road down for seven complete days and another 31 nights.
The two most recent closures - one in 1983 that spanned 84 days, and one in 1995 that lasted 150 days - were chaotic ordeals for Coastsiders. But decades before those emergencies galvanized the community to demand
a replacement, the state was trying to get a new road approved. Doelger's plans In 1958 the state began construction of Interstate 280, which would eventually link the bayside cities of San Francisco and San Jose.
That same year a replacement of the current alignment of Highway 1 appeared in the Master Plan of San Mateo County in the form of a freeway version essentially following the existing waterfront route between Pacifica
and Half Moon Bay. But Henry Doelger, developer of San Francisco's Sunset District and Daly City's Westlake District had different ideas. Doelger had purchased 10,000 acres of land on the Mid-Coast. As part
of a larger development plan, Doelger had visions of building a city of 60,000 people on 7,000 acres nestled beneath the southern face of Montara Mountain. To accommodate that many people he needed expanded highway
capacity, but simply expanding the capacity of Highway 1 was not Doelger's solution. He wanted the new freeway to be farther inland, but not for safety's sake. A1962 memo written by Harry Dean, regional supervisor
of planning with the state Department of Parks and Recreation, reveals what Doelger had in mind. "By moving it inland," Dean's memo said, "the Doelger organization will acquire more developable land
on the seaward side of the road. The rest of the area will be very intensely developed into residential apartment and multiple dwelling sites ... "They are loath to consider any compromise which would give us a
part in developing the area. Their concept is that this would be more of a city-type park and that it wouldn't lend itself to state park development." Much of that same land was, in fact, purchased earlier this
year by the Peninsula Open Space Trust to remain as undeveloped open space in perpetuity. Birth of a bypass On Aug. 25, 1960, an inland road over Montara Mountain that would bypass the unstable oceanside
road and facilitate Doelger's development plans debuted at a State Highway Commission meeting at the Sanchez Adobe in Pacifica. The inland road would come to be known as the Devil's Slide bypass. The plan was to
construct a six-lane divided freeway a mile inland from the ocean and 7.5 miles long from Shamrock Ranch in Pacifica's Linda Mar neighborhood over the mountains. It would rejoin the existing Highway 1 at the Half
Moon Bay Airport. Records reveal that the state did not plan to build the freeway until another major road closure hit. Then the state hoped to use the emergency to assure funding and to speed construction.
Montara resident Nancy Maule was among those aghast at Doelger's plan to line the ridge and flatlands with houses and spoke out early against the proposal. "It was such a goofy idea of his," Maule recalled
in a recent interview. "I was not that dumb. I didn't ever want to see the ridgeline with houses sticking up every place, and that was what he was planning to do." Doelger wasn't the only one with grandiose
development plans hinging on Devil's Slide. In 1963 Alfred Wiebe, a Montaran, bought the 916-acre Devil's Slide rock as war surplus, including the familiar discarded lookout tower atop the steep concrete steps
built into the side of the mountain just south of the slide area. Wiebe planned to build apartments, a recreational spa, restaurant and, atop the property, a castle housing a radio station. He credited the idea
of buying it to Charlotte Magnette, a woman living in El Granada at the time who claimed to be a Belgian princess. Magnette proclaimed that the beauty of Devil's Slide outdid the Cote d' Azur. Wiebe's plan never
got off the ground, but Doelger built some homes in Princeton. Mid-Coast residents, irate over his plans for Montara, were able to delay him and in 1969 he gave up and sold his holdings to developer Deane and
Deane Inc., which hoped to build homes and a golf course. No action was taken to move the bypass forward until April 1971 when the freeway bypass resurfaced. Deane and Deane was pursuing its resort plan for Montara, as
well as a large tourist-oriented "fishing village" in Princeton, and pushing for greater freeway access. The state and the county began suggesting that it would start construction of the bypass in
1973. To dampen the image of an enormous freeway slicing through the Coastside, the state Division of Highways (later renamed CalTrans) referred to it as a "two-lane freeway with truck climbing lanes."
In actuality, however, its initial construction was planned to be four lanes over 90 percent of the length, with grading to ultimately accommodate six lanes. Bearing a petition with signatures from 1,100 Mid-Coast
residents, Maule pleaded with the Board of Supervisors to halt the project, fearing it would split the Mid-Coast in two as the four-lane freeway section of Highway 1 through Pacifica had done. The bypass found
support from, among others, Half Moon Bay businessman Bob Senz, executive secretary for the Coalition of Concerned Citizens. "This is good news," Senz said in a Half Moon Bay Review article at the time.
"It shows that some people are beginning to wake up and realize the facts of life. "Route 92 is a death trap and the Devil's Slide situation is also dangerous. These highways should be built promptly to
save the lives of motorists. Too many people have been slaughtered. The radical ecologists have delayed these projects." $16 million project In late February 1972, the Board of Supervisors rebuffed
bypass opponents and approved moving forward with the freeway, estimated to cost $16,275 million. Maule and the Montara-Moss Beach Improvement Association vowed to fight the plan and found a powerful ally in
Woodside resident Olive Mayer. Mayer, representing the Sierra Club, had spoken to the Montara-Moss Beach Association the week before the supervisors' decision, informing them that the Sierra Club was poised to sue to
stop the freeway. The lawsuit, filed on May 22, 1972, listed the Sierra Club, Committee for Green Foothills, Save Our Shoreline, El Granada Residents Association, the South Coast conservation group L.I.F.E. (Local
Initiative for Environment), Maule and 11 other local conservationists as plaintiffs. Pitted against them was the federal secretary of transportation, the state Highway Commission and state Department of Public
Works. In a press release issued when the suit was filed, the Sierra Club's Claire Dedrick railed against "one of the last monsters of the 'freeway age'" that would destroy the coast by opening it up to
development. The lawsuit argued that the defendants had not complied with state or federal law because they had not prepared an environmental impact statement (EIS). Such reports were new at the time since the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that mandated them was passed in 1969. Prior to that, simple "environmental fact sheets," which were often less detailed than today's negative declaration of
environmental impacts, were all that was required. Environmentalists also found an unlikely ally in then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. On Aug. 7, 1971, in response to growing concern over proposals to replace the two-lane
Coastal Highway with a freeway, Gov. Reagan announced a new coastal highway planning policy. The new policy would "enhance and conserve environmental qualities while minimizing disruption to stable ecological
systems and ... also harmonize as nearly as possible with natural forms," the governor announced in a press release. The original departmental directive from the Division of Highways implementing the
policy suggested that state, regional and local interests be balanced, but with additional weight given to local agencies' desires. The action hinted at a state versus local battle over control of the California
coast that would emerge the next year in the form of statewide Proposition 20, establishing the California Coastal Act. The act defined debate over coastal resources that continues undiminished today. In
contesting the lawsuit, the state argued that its plans for the freeway were made before NEPA was made law and thus were exempt. But U.S. District Court Judge William Sweigert ruled on Dec. 6, 1972, in favor of
environmentalists. He cited "possible adverse aesthetic and recreational impact on the rural Half Moon Bay area ... resulting from freeway construction across a mountain barrier that has heretofore sheltered the
southerly rural area from the north-to-south commuter access and the rapid suburban sprawl that accompanies such access." Faced with the requirement of preparing an EIS and a swing of the pendulum toward
environmental protection, the transportation department shelved the bypass during the remainder of Gov. Reagan's administration, removing it from the State Transportation Improvement Plan. It chose, instead, as
former District Director Burch Bachtold recently explained, "to pursue projects more where people wanted them" rather than in hostile communities. Despite a supportive posture by the administration of
Reagan's successor, Gov. Jerry Brown, toward attempts by environmentalists to replace the Devil's Slide bypass with something else, the bypass would emerge a decade later stronger than ever and with a renewed,
urgent sense of purpose. Next week CalTrans is pulled in opposite directions by two very different governors - one liberal and pro-environment, the other conservative and pro-business - and the bypass wins approval,
only to be stopped in court. Read the second article in this series, " Read the third article in this series, " |
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