In 1894, Dr. John Roberts spent three and a half hours in a horse-drawn cart reaching shipwreck survivors near Point Sur, and left convinced a road had to exist. It took four decades to prove him right. The fog off this coast had already claimed enough ships to justify a lighthouse at Point Sur in 1889 — keepers and their families living on that volcanic rock 361 feet above the Pacific for the next 85 years. But a road required something harder: 18 years of construction, prison labor, and Depression-era federal money. The Bixby Creek Bridge came first, completed in October 1932 — a reinforced concrete arch spanning 360 feet, clearing the creek by 260 feet, the longest concrete arch span on the California State Highway System at the time. The highway it was built to carry didn't open until 1937. The cliffs didn't negotiate. They were simply endured.
