This road closes. Slides, fires, washouts — it has been cut somewhere for a large part of the last decade. A guide that only works when the road is whole is a guide that fails exactly when people need it most.
Cause: Timber Fire, burning since 8 August 2026. The closure runs from Mile marker 44.5, just south of Post Ranch and Ventana to Mile marker 37, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Reopening: No date announced.
Is Highway 1 open?
PARTIALLY
Highway 1 is cut mid-coast. Both ends are open.
Those are two different things. The automatic check runs at 08:00 and 20:00 Central and can only ever add caution — it is not permitted to reopen a road or to refresh the review date. Only a person can do that, which is why the second date moves more slowly than the first.
In force 24 hours a day · In force until 6:00 AM on 8/31/26 · Cause: construction
1-way controlled traffic 15.7 mi south of Monterey /at Rocky Creek Bridge/ (Monterey Co) 24 hrs a day 7 days a week thru 0600 hrs on 8/31/26 - Due to construction
Up to about 1,700 vehicles a day cannot get through. What you can do depends on which way you are travelling, and the two are not the same. The crossing over the range leaves the coast south of the closure, so it is behind you if you are heading north and beyond your reach if you are heading south.
You are stopped at Mile marker 44.5, just south of Post Ranch and Ventana
Go back the way you came. For most people this is the right answer: the coast is worth driving twice and the alternatives are long.
Not reachable from this side. It leaves the coast at Highway 1 at Kirk Creek Bridge, on the far side of the closure.
Back to Carmel, then CA-68 to Salinas, US 101 south to Paso Robles, then CA-46 west to the coast. It is a long way round — hours, not minutes — and none of it is the coast. Check times before you commit.
You are stopped at Mile marker 37, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park
24.5 miles over the summit. Takes you off the coast to Jolon and King City, and onto US 101. Steep, narrow and winding — seven miles of it at eight to ten per cent. Not a road for a big rig or a towed trailer.
Go back the way you came. For most people this is the right answer: the coast is worth driving twice and the alternatives are long.
Back to Paso Robles, then US 101 north to Salinas, then CA-68 to Monterey. It is a long way round — hours, not minutes — and none of it is the coast. Check times before you commit.
The vehicle count is a ceiling worked out from Caltrans annual averages on either side of the closure, not a measurement of the closure itself. Real numbers swing hard with the season and the day of the week. Nothing here is a promise that a road is open — check the authorities before you set out.
Late August is peak season on this coast, so expect traffic about 17% above the annual average. Caltrans has no permanent counter on Big Sur, so this is the season against the annual figures below — not a live measurement.
At the county line the coast road carries about 1,000 vehicles a day. By Garrapata Creek, at the northern end of the coast, it is 5,800 — roughly 6 times as many. Big Sur is a quiet road that gets busier the closer it comes to Carmel, which is why a closure mid-coast strands very few people and inconveniences a great many.
Read these carefully. Caltrans BACK and AHEAD refer to the segment behind and ahead of the count point, not to travel direction. Every figure is a two-way total and an annual average; summer weekends on the south coast run well above it. No public northbound/southbound split exists for this road.
How much of each year this road was cut, what caused it, and how long it lasted.
Highway 1 by the numbers →This page is maintained carefully, but treat it as plus or minus 24 to 48 hours. During a fire or a storm a road can be opened in the morning and shut again by afternoon, and we will not always know before you do.
Nothing here is an authority. Before you drive on it, confirm with the Forest Service, the Sheriff's Office, Caltrans, and — for Nacimiento-Fergusson — Fort Hunter Liggett. If an agency and this page disagree, the agency is right.
We keep this as honest as we can. But fires, slides and floods do not check with anybody, and we are not the ones who decide what this coast does next.
No closures reported on Highway 1, US-101, CA-46 or CA-68 in this stretch.
Also in effect
The coast reads as three pieces right now. Two of them you can drive.
Two ends and a middle. The middle is the one nobody knows about.
You are stopped at Mile marker 44.5, just south of Post Ranch and Ventana
Go back the way you came. For most people this is the right answer: the coast is worth driving twice and the alternatives are long.
Not reachable from this side. It leaves the coast at Highway 1 at Kirk Creek Bridge, on the far side of the closure.
Back to Carmel, then CA-68 to Salinas, US 101 south to Paso Robles, then CA-46 west to the coast. It is a long way round — hours, not minutes — and none of it is the coast. Check times before you commit.
You are stopped at Mile marker 37, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park
24.5 miles over the summit. Takes you off the coast to Jolon and King City, and onto US 101. Steep, narrow and winding — seven miles of it at eight to ten per cent. Not a road for a big rig or a towed trailer.
Go back the way you came. For most people this is the right answer: the coast is worth driving twice and the alternatives are long.
Back to Paso Robles, then US 101 north to Salinas, then CA-68 to Monterey. It is a long way round — hours, not minutes — and none of it is the coast. Check times before you commit.
The only road across the Santa Lucia Range between Monterey and Cambria.
West end at Highway 1 at Kirk Creek Bridge, east end at Mission Road at Jolon. Reopened 15 November 2024, after nearly four years closed by the Dolan Fire.
It is the one place you can enter this coast in the middle instead of at an end. Arrive over the top and both arms open in front of you.
And it puts you back on US-101 at either end — Jolon is a fork, not a dead end.
The coastal end, at the bridge. The campground sits on the bluff right here, and this is where you rejoin Highway 1.
2,780 feet, about seven miles up from the ocean. On a clear day you see the whole south coast behind you at once.
An active Army installation, and the reason to have your paperwork in the glovebox. The road runs through it on the eastern descent.
Founded 14 July 1771 by Junípero Serra, the third mission in Alta California. It stands on Fort Hunter Liggett land, in open country with nothing modern around it — which is why it looks more like itself than almost any other mission in the state.
Not 'JO-lon'. It is ho-LONE — a Salinan name, and one of those places where saying it right marks you as someone who has actually been. The settlement sits in the San Antonio River valley, entirely surrounded by the post.
On County G14 between Jolon and the highway. Blink and you have driven through it.
US-101, and the end of the crossing. Fuel, food and a signal again.
Two ways the crossing turns a dead end back into a trip.
You reach Highway 1 at Kirk Creek, well below the closure, with the whole south coast open in front of you — Gorda, Sand Dollar, Plaskett Creek, Ragged Point. You can also run a short way north to Lucia before the road stops.
Drive the north coast as far as it goes, then turn inland at Kirk Creek and come out on the 101 instead of doubling back the way you came.
Even with the coast cut on both sides of the junction you are not shut out. Come over the top, run as far north as the road allows, come back and run as far south as it allows, and return inland the way you came. You get the coast with nobody else on it, which is not the worst way to see it.