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Old Posted Jul 13, 2011, 10:43 PM
Los Angeles Past Los Angeles Past is offline
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Tales of the 405

Nice pics! Thanks gsj!

When the 405 opened, it was a huge deal to us folks who lived "out of town," whether in the Valley or elsewhere. I remember my mom rejoiced when the northern section of the San Diego Freeway opened. Before 1960, it took practically all day to drive from our house in the east SGV to Mom's sister's place in Manhattan Beach. Consequently, we didn't go there very often - until the San Diego Freeway opened over Sepulveda Pass, that is. From 1961 to 1963, the fastest way to get from points east to the beaches was actually to take the Golden State Freeway from the San Bernardino, then take the Ventura Freeway west to the new San Diego Freeway, and then south over the Santa Monica Mountains. (Notice I use the names of the freeways, not the highway numbers. It wasn't until the 1970s that people started using the numbers more often than the names. In the '60s there were fewer than ten freeway routes, after all; it was just easier to call them by their names.) When the Santa Monica Freeway was completed in 1963, though, that marked the end of us taking the northern route through the Valley to the beaches. After that, we went to Aunt Lorraine's house a lot. (Oh, joy.)

After freshman year in college (1973), my friend Richard and I went to summer school at UCLA. We got an apartment on Kester in Sherman Oaks and drove over the Sepulveda Pass every weekday. More often than not, though, we'd avoid the freeway and take old Sepulveda Blvd. to and from school. Generally it was lots quicker! We'd barrel along the curvy road either in his '66 Pontiac 2+2 convertible or in my '67 Mustang. Man that was fun, just blowing by all the stop-and-go folks on the freeway. We always wondered why lots more people didn't take Sepulveda Blvd. over the hills. Just because a road's called a "freeway" doesn't necessarily mean it's the fastest way!

-Scott

Last edited by Los Angeles Past; Jun 13, 2012 at 6:13 AM.
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