Boondocks to Bustling
The sleepy, bucolic scene, above left, is San Juan Capistrano in 1932. A narrow country road bends southward toward town, where the mission is barely visible in the distance among the fields, trees and uncluttered hills.
The photographer was standing in the road, but he or she needn’t worry. In the midst of the Depression, a car going by was an event here in Orange County’s boondocks.
Hard to imagine that this country road was, in fact, U.S. 101, the monarch of Western highways that, before being usurped by the interstates, stretched from Mexico to Canada.
Though just two narrow lanes of pavement, it was Orange County’s backbone, running from Los Angeles County through La Habra, Fullerton, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Tustin, Irvine, San Juan Capistrano, Doheny Park (now Capistrano Beach), then hugging the coast until cutting inland behind San Clemente and heading toward San Diego.
Today you’d better not stand in the road. Nowadays the highway through San Juan Capistrano is Interstate 5, above right, which is not for an instant bucolic or sleepy.
Started in 1959, completed in 1965, the freeway carries on average nearly 8,400 cars and trucks through San Juan Capistrano every hour.
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