Big Sur place names · stop 40 of 43, going north

Rocky Creek

Rocky Creek
Wikimedia Commons
Highway 1 was open along this coast when it was last checked. Caltrans' own Lane Closure System, as verified 2026-10-06. Today’s road status.

Rocky Creek Bridge is Bixby's smaller sister, and just as old. In the spring of 2024 a piece of the road on this bridge's approach fell into the sea, and for weeks the coast ran on convoys twice a day. The coast has always been this way.

The road is a negotiation, never a promise.

Told by Mabel Plaskett, whose column Coast Trails ran in the King City Rustler’s monthly supplement from 1959 to 1964, and who was in print as early as 1941 under the pen name Belinda Brown. Her family has been on this coast since 1869. Her writing.

Rocky Creek
RoganRennie, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 — Rocky Creek Bridge in the mist
Rocky Creek
Fietsbel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 — from the northwest

Where it is

36.3760, -121.9020 — Highway 1, Big Sur coast, California.

The whole drive, spoken as you go.
Forty-three places between Carmel and San Simeon, free, and it works with no signal once it is loaded — which most of this coast has none of. Open the Big Sur guide.
← South: Bixby BridgeNorth: Garrapata →

All forty-three places →