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the general manager of K R. O N T V. San Francisco. Mr Harold P. C. The film which you are about to witness is one of the many non entertainment public service programs produced in color by K R O N T. V channel. For san Francisco,

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The rights to this film specifically prohibit its use for broadcast without the expressed permission of K R O N T. V. The management of K R. O N T. V hopes you will derive some benefit from this presentation and we solicit your comments. Mhm. This is

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a journey along the Ohio chiseled into the cliffs and flung across the canyons of the California coastline. In its 727 miles, it has much to tell of the American land through which it passes of quiet places in hidden valley of desolate places, throwing back the echo

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of forgotten hope of places where hope became opulent reality or a strident circus. Most of all, it is a highway through time traversing country, unchanged in half a century, unchanged in 1000 years in constant change on the edge of a westward moving country that can move

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no further west. Yeah. Mhm. Right assignment for the award winning weekly report to the West, produced by the news and documentary department of K. R. O. N. T. V. Tonight highway through time. An exploration of the changing spectacle found by a traveler on California Route one.

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It begins here, deep in southern California, 82 miles from the Mexican frontier and its beginnings are deceptive. We're here at Capistrano beach. The highway is four lanes broad hills are gentle. The land is lush and tropical. There is no hint here of what is to lie

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ahead. Even the sea which is to become the highways wild and constant enemy seems here almost gentle and the deception is in itself fitting where there's something seductive about the southern coast of California. A seeming promise of paradise, Shangri La on the Pacific for 100,000 migrants

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from Mid Continent America the fabled land, the promised place where villas stand above sands washed by a warm sea where every man who can command a dengue may wear yachtsman blues and call himself captain and the poet and the painter might wander in the setting of

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an Eden as masterpieces flow from pen and pallet in a constant tide of instant inspiration. Like the witches gingerbread house. Enough of the fable is true to present a convincing facade. Men and women of privilege and those who can retire to a private world have found

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their lotus land. But the highway traverses the other side of paradise to the suntanned carnival midway, 50 miles long. That has come to be another popular cliche of southern California. From Laguna beach to Malibu it stretches and if it has its critics, it is well to

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remember that people enjoy a carnival as much as they enjoy and eaten. Mhm. Mhm. Okay, mm hmm. Mhm mm. Yeah, yeah. The capital of it all is named the city of angels.

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Fallen angels perhaps as seen from Highway one as it becomes a beaten track bordered by side shows all the way to Santa Monica. Then suddenly the american continent rises above the highway and the sea in steep palisades hiding the elegant homes of Beverly hills and beyond

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the celluloid dream factories of Hollywood and beyond that the nation for whom those dreams are spun Malibu. A colony of beach houses. Many owned by writers, directors, actors built on the sands where F scott Fitzgerald walked with his dying talents and his realization that a dream

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is a fragile thing. Mm 80 miles to the north lies santa Barbara. It is here on one of the beautiful harbors of the world, the palm trees, surfboards, swimming pool culture of southern California makes a suitably spectacular last stand on highway one ahead the land is

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to become more hardened to see more hush. The highway more spare. Yeah. North of santa barbara at Gaviota pass, a tunnel is drilled through the santa ynez mountains where they just toward the sea. It is a wall closing off southern California. It is a gateway to

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a different land. Here. Highway one leaves the four lane freeway and takes on the character of a country road. The character which it shall retain for most of its remaining 550 miles and here one enters another time passing through land all but untouched for a century

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and more country settled by spanish land grant and in many quiet ways, living still in the fashion of a colonial California almost forgotten. Beyond the mountains of the santa ANAs range. In the cattle country of the foothills lies the Lompoc Valley. Open, broad, sweeping country, rich,

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fertile and flat as the great plains of the american midwest for generations, farming was the way of life here. And the valley floor still yields a rich harvest, including flowers and the commercial production of flower bulbs and see. But for all its rural tradition, the mid

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20th century has caught up with the Lompoc Valley sights and sounds of the space age are in its sky. But for some who live here, many of them of mexican heritage, the space era is yet as remote as a rocket in the sky. The valley ends

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in sand dunes at Oc on O. And Pismo beach. The wind sculpted ridges and nose have spawned an exotic breed of machine half gallop, half sand flea. The dune buggy, the yacht harbors, beach cabanas and retirement villas of the southern California coast had been left behind

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from pismo north tomorrow. His country for those of a more hearty strike the abalone hunter. The gatherers of mussels and crabs, the diggers of clams and the men who live on the harvest from the sea. Yeah. Mhm, mm hmm, when

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it's etched against the sky. At dusk, the offshore monolith of moral rot seems solid, untouched time, but change has come and in the dawn, the rock and the harbor at Morro Bay are dominated by a web of wires and the concrete chimneys of an electrical generating

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plant. Some 30 miles north on Highway one, the work of man is seen in a different way. In the hills above the tiny village of san Simeon. A man built a fantastic monument to himself. His name was William, Randolph hearst, publisher, politician, art collector Kingmaker. A

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man of almost incomprehensible wealth and power. He built and decorated his palace in many styles from many times and filled its 100 rooms with priceless works of art here. The man who in his early career was a champion of labor unions and public ownership privately lived

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in the manner of the king. He died in 1951. And today the Hearst Castle and its Treasures are a state historical monument visited each week by thousands of travelers on highway one beyond san Simeon. The pavement progressively narrows and steepens until it becomes a niche carved

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into the cliff. Here. Highway one twists and rise as if struggling to keep its precarious hold often it loses its grip on one side, the sea smashes at its footings on the other. The mountain slide and rip across its road bed in winter and spring. Its

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face is torn by surging water. It seems that more ancient forces than men are trying to repel the alien roadway. It is here that Highway one runs its most majestic course. It's the big Sur country, a land still basic, remote and bold. Okay thank you. Mm.

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A few people live in the Big Sur country. Many come here but if you stay it takes a very special kind of man to remain unintimidated in such an elemental confrontation with nature. Those

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who do stay tend to be the iconoclasts, the individualist, the idealist people willing to break the mold of conventions, whether their style of living reflects affluence and comfort or the more spartan bohemian life. The view from the cliffs of Big Sur is no respecter of bank

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balances who you were and what you own has less importance than who you are and what you think. The few accommodations for travelers are filled in summer, all but deserted in winter and the ancient cycles of nature have not yet been destroyed by man in this

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realm. There are no exact boundaries to Big Sur, but gradually the highway straightens its tortuous course and the coastline becomes more gentle and it returns to Mementos of the spanish colonial heritage of California. The coast that was conquered as much by the cross as by the

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sword. The chain of missions forged two centuries ago by a Franciscan monk from the spanish island of Mallorca are still living houses of worship as well as monuments along the old Mission train. The founder of the missions, Junipero Serra is buried beneath the altar of one

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of them. The Mission san Carlos Borromeo. Outside the mission walls lies the town of Carmel. Once a colony of artists and writers. Today it has more retired people than painters, more honeymooners than poets. Golfing and real estate sales are said to be very good. Next door

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Monterrey capital of California under the flags of spain Mexico and the United States restored at Dobie buildings retain the flavor of that historic past. Monterey is part Steinbeck country too, though it's fisherman's warf and calorie row are now pale reflections of the robust writer's works. Steinbeck

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can still feel at home though among the working fishing fleet in Monterey harbor And the fields that Border Highway one as it cuts sharply towards Salinas, then again rolls along beside the sea. Here it might be pondered who could possibly eat that many artichokes, but here

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they are, by the time and local pride is linked to the boast that this is the artichoke capital of the world. The highway rolls north flat and straight and never far from the sound of breaking surf until near half Moon Bay. The north american land mass

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rises in steep, chalky cliffs like the dover coast somehow moved to the pacific show. A head lies san Francisco, the golden gate and beyond the hard country of the north coast the Yeah, As Highway one approaches San Francisco, it was perhaps inevitable that it should traverse

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that phenomenon of mid-century America. The housing track. The boxes march rank upon rank over the hillsides until the highway cuts toward the core of the city itself. Then suddenly the traveler finds he has left city streets and is winding through Golden Gate Park, the incredible oasis

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built where sand dunes drifted less than a century ago. A few blocks further, the presidio of San Francisco, founded by the Spanish almost 200 years ago and still a functioning military base beyond the Golden Gate itself, where highway one takes its most soaring leap. Yeah,

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Once across the Golden Gate one May pause and look back And there are few who can resist the most photographed view on the entire length of Highway one here, highway one touches Sausalito one time whaling station and erstwhile artists colony beside the Golden Gate, Now essentially

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a bedroom community where those of affluence live in areas perched upon the hills, those without affluence, livin houseboats and arcs at tide level and seldom does the twain care to meet At the edge of Sausalito Highway one turns again towards the sea and regains the narrow,

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winding character it will keep for the rest of its 220 miles. This stretch is one of the most treacherous on the entire route twisting across the ridges and canyons below Mount Tambora pie until it reaches the shore and a protected, almost hidden cove called muir beach

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said to have been a favored landing place of prohibition era smugglers today, the homes of a few san Francisco commuters cling to the cliffs above the beach and smuggled contraband has been replaced by picnic lunches and beach ball. A few miles further along the coast, the

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highway winds down from cliffs to a beach community in transition. Much of the stinson beach ocean frontage has been developed as a state park and the sand is crowded on summer weekends, but the rest of the year, it's essentially a small town in the throes of

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discovering whether the future will make it a beach resort, a real estate development or an artist's colony. The only certainty seems to be that the rural atmosphere of still bordering the highway here will someday disappear. But the tumultuous changes of an exploding bay area population have

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not yet spread to this part of the marine shorelines and for many miles to the north highway one traces a line through a rare piece of California, a little different today from what it was in the years before the war at

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Duncan's cove. On the cinema coastline, fishermen make a living from the sea with distinctive triangular net. Their catches pearl in a small delicacy of the snow family. It takes a practice I to see the flash of the tiny silver fish in the waves and it takes

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nerve to 21 Fisherman are known to have been claimed by the ground swells that sweet the rocks And signs warned that anyone within 25 ft of the ocean is in danger at all times. But there are places along the Sonoma coast where the sea keeps a

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more hospitable mood and the highway borders the ocean for mine until a Jenner, it again climbs steep bluff. From here it will remain for the most part, a high road carved into cliffs and traversing the crest of ridges high above the surface, Traffic on Highway one

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takes on a different character to with logging trucks bringing a giant harvest out of the coastal woodlands and lumber trucks moving fresh sawn boards from mill to market. This is timber country where the wine of saws and planers frequently drowns out the sounds of surf by

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tradition, its country settled by the hardy breed of lumberjack and free booting timber baron. So some find it a surprise to discover the highway bisecting 1/19 century Russian fourth, a reminder that the Russians too had a hand in settling California. In the early 18 hundreds, they

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built their redwood stockade at fort ross and ranged as far south as baja California for sea otters, in California for seals, but by the middle of the century, the seal and otter herds were almost extinct. So the Russians sold their holdings today ford ross is a

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state park serving as a footnote to a little known part of the California story. The north coast has been newly discovered by the vacation ist and the developer and some feel it is in danger of being overrun by the motels, trailer parks, housing tracts and neon,

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which we sometimes mistake for civilization. But Highway one in its northward route finds this land as yet almost unmarked and unchanged as the coastal fog rolls in softening and diffusing the north country around old towns like La La La and Point Arena and Elk and Albion,

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it spends the pleasant illusion that nothing will ever change here. Now. The highway through time is cut off from the valley's a few miles inland and becomes a very separate land, a world of forgotten lives, a forgotten place. Mhm. Uh huh. Mhm.

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When the fog begins to lift, it is only the see of course that has remained unchanged. Even the town of Mendocino thrust out into the pacific on a dramatic headland is an illusion of the fact many of its houses and it's white steepled church speak more

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of new England than of California. When the tourists have all gone home, the streets are almost empty. The pace is comfortably slow yet for all its appearance of yesterday. Mendocino is moving into tomorrow. It's a town discovered in the last decade by artists and they in

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turn have been discovered by tourists and the inevitable real estate speculators. But change has not made the town ugly at least not yet. And Mendocino is still in the enviable position of having a controlled choice of its future if Mendocino is on the edge of tomorrow.

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Most of the highway north is more solidly involved with today and the ways of survival traditional to this land. The lumber mill and the fishing fleet, The fishermen of no, you know like the loggers of Fort Bragg are hardy, tough and proud of their salty heritage

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and give to this part of the sea coast its special flavor. North of fort Bragg, the coast turns harsh and the sea is strewn with boulders and outcroppings of black rock. This is 700 miles from the warm, soft beach where the highway began at Capistrano. It

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seems incredible that the ocean dashing on this shore is the same that washes so easily under the palm fringed sand. To the south Here, Highway one turns from the sea for the last time it climbs quickly over wooded ridges, leaving behind both the past and the

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future as it withdraws from the western edge of America. Okay, mm hmm. Yeah, assignment four is produced each week in the community interest by the news and documentary department of K. R. O. N. T. V. Thank you. Yeah, maybe Be

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with us again next week for another report to the West on Assignment four. Mhm