Before the present Highway 1 was finished in the 1930s, a narrow, winding, steep road called Pedro Mountain Road connected Montara with Pacifica. It was completed in 1914.
The route over the hills gave the Coastside much better access to San Francisco and offered competition to the Ocean Shore Railroad, which ran between San Francisco and Tunitas Creek from 1907 to 1920. It probably contributed to the railroad’s end. The cliff road at Devil’s Slide stayed unreliable for decades; a slide in January 1995 closed it for five months.
Getting through the cliffs at Devil’s Slide stayed a problem for decades, until the Tom Lantos Tunnels opened in 2013.
More on this site: history