Old Highway 395, Part 3: The Cabrillo Freeway (CA 163; US 395 1948-1969); Kearny Villa Road (US 395, Old I-15); Pomerado Road to Poway (US 395 1935-1950)

San Diego's first freeway wasn't Interstate 5 or Interstate 8 or Interstate 15, and certainly not Interstate 805 or for that matter any other Interstate highway, U.S. Highway 101 or even U.S. Highway 80. It was U.S. Highway 395.

In the 1930s, California Division of Highways planners and the city of San Diego were presented with a two-fold problem: the two-lane US 395 was becoming increasingly congested and difficult to navigate, and its corollary, that San Diego had no viable high-speed central north-south route. Murphy Canyon was too narrow to expand with the earthmoving technologies available, and it was too far east for direct downtown access. (This is ironic in the present day since of course Interstate 15, US 395's modern successor, runs down Murphy Canyon today.)

Fortunately, there was a natural corridor running right from downtown that was unoccupied, and parallel to US 80/US 395 on Park Blvd: Cabrillo Canyon. Cabrillo Canyon was named for explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who (as mentioned in Part 1) discovered what would become San Diego in 1542. At the time, Cabrillo Cyn was something to be crossed over and not driven through, exemplified by the beautiful 1915 El Prado bridge carrying Laurel Street high and dry above the undeveloped canyon floor (which even had water in it, as the man-made Laguna del Puente). However, its unique topography was very promising to the highway engineers searching for an alternative route, who exclaimed in California Highways and Public Works that its numerous outshooting arroyos "branching out at right angles to the mesas between ... is peculiarly adapted to the economical construction of a freeway. The arroyos, combined with short structures for cross traffic, form a natural distribution system to all parts of the city."

Despite the enthusiastic reception of the new route, the long range plan for what would be called the Cabrillo Parkway took some time to come to fruition. An embryonic plan was submitted as early as 1932 by engineer Rowland Reed and promoted by local community boosters led by father and son George and Arthur Marston, but full right-of-way was not granted by the city of San Diego until 1941 and the only existing structure that could be used for the new highway was the 1915 bridge; fifteen others had to be constructed from scratch, the first one being the Washington St/6th St bridge built in 1940. Actual groundbreaking on the alignment itself was considerably delayed and did not occur until February 1946. Nevertheless, engineers made the most of the long gestation and planned it as a true parkway in the mold of the earlier and very successful Arroyo Seco Parkway (today's CA 110), even including paths for equestrian and hiker traffic, but also made sure attention was paid to design speed such that there were no at-grade crossings all the way from Ash St to Kearny Mesa. As part of the last portions of the project, 10th and 11th Streets in downtown San Diego were converted to southbound and northbound one-way streets, respectively, and a complex interchange was built with Mission Valley Rd, the future site of the US 80 freeway and modern Interstate 8, in the heart of Mission Valley.

The new $3.5 million, 7.1 mile Cabrillo Parkway was an immediate success. Opened on 28 February 1948 and signed as U.S. Highway 395 (cosigned with US 80 through Balboa Park, decommissioning the old Park Blvd alignment), it received a massive ribboncutting ceremony with the younger Marston, Reed, local dignitaries and military brass culminating in a mile-long auto parade from Balboa Park to Linda Vista. The scenic and picturesque landscaping and views of the new Park arterial are best appreciated on the 1947 aerial shot at right (click for a 126K large view in a new window); notice the lack of the Interstate highways and the relatively underdeveloped northern portion of the city towards the city limits. Heavily utilized as the central arterial the city and state had envisioned, the Cabrillo Pkwy became the plumbline of San Diego's new northern expansion and an important facilitator of the city's modern history. A typical view of the highway can be seen at the upper left of this page.

In just eight years, however, the formerly generous speed limit of 55mph on most sections was seen as a liability and the highway desperately needed an expansion to three lanes per direction. Unlike the Arroyo Seco, unfortunately, there was no breakdown lane to shoehorn into the tight design which had looked so spacious little more than a decade earlier, while its rechristening as the Cabrillo Freeway was nevertheless done without a trace of irony. The new US 80 freeway required considerable reconfiguration of the Mission Valley interchange in 1960, and with the construction of the Interstate 5 San Diego Freeway through downtown bringing even more traffic into the Cabrillo Fwy's southern end, a new four-level-style interchange (shades of the Arroyo Seco again) was built as part of the I-5 project in 1964 depicted at left during its early days. However, further expansion of the Cabrillo Fwy was not to be, because the huge sums brought in by the extension of Interstate 15 to San Diego in 1968 allowed a more favourable routing to be adopted. The expansion of the Cabrillo Fwy never happened, and after its designation as CA 163 in 1969 and the US 395 signs started to disappear, particular attention was paid to turning it back into the parkway it was originally designed as and recognizing its unique position in the history of San Diego. We'll see portions of this "retro-retrofitting" as we drive the modern highway completely from END sign to END sign. As befits its historic status, the Cabrillo Parkway became part of the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

As a technical note, please excuse some of the strange angles used in this section -- the CA 163 Cabrillo Fwy is very difficult to photograph safely from the road, and creative measures and vantage points were needed to get a good shot and not impede traffic.