Everything about California State Route 2 totally explained
State Route 2 is a
state highway in the
U.S. state of
California. It runs from the junction of
Santa Monica Boulevard and
Centinela Avenue at
Santa Monica to
Route 138 east of Wrightwood,
running concurrent with Routes
101 and
210.
This route is part of the
California Freeway and Expressway System and is eligible for the
State Scenic Highway System.
Route description
Santa Monica Boulevard
Route 2 currently begins at the Los Angeles/Santa Monica city limit. From Centinela Avenue, Route 2 heads northeast on Santa Monica Boulevard through the wealthy areas of
West Los Angeles,
Westwood,
Century City, and
Beverly Hills before entering the decidedly urban
West Hollywood. Santa Monica Boulevard, being a major street, is for most of its length at least four lanes wide.
At the west end of its run, Santa Monica Boulevard starts off
Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. From there until
Sepulveda Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard is a densely urban commercial street. Most of the
Westside car dealerships are located on Santa Monica Boulevard. After Sepulveda, Santa Monica Boulevard passes by Century City and its shopping center, and intersects with Wilshire in Beverly Hills. After intersecting with Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica Boulevard continues northeast towards West Hollywood, spanning
Beverly Boulevard and
Melrose Avenue. In the middle of West Hollywood, Santa Monica turns to run east-west north of
Wilshire Boulevard. One of the most famous spots for male
prostitution and
transgender prostitution is Santa Monica Boulevard in the Hollywood area, especially the area east of
La Brea Avenue. At Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, Route 2 turns east continuing on Santa Monica Boulevard to the Hollywood Freeway in
Hollywood.
Santa Monica Boulevard merges on its eastern end with
Sunset Boulevard in the Sunset Junction neighborhood of
Silver Lake.
South Santa Monica Boulevard, often called Little Santa Monica, runs parallel to Santa Monica Boulevard through Beverly Hills, from the Los Angeles city limits to Beverly Drive. After Beverly Drive, Little Santa Monica turns east, becoming Burton Way. Burton Way merges into
San Vicente Boulevard at its intersection with
La Cienega Boulevard.
Hollywood Freeway and Alvarado Street
Route 2 then merges onto
U.S. Route 101 (the
Hollywood Freeway) and heads southeast to the Alvarado Street exit. There, it heads northeast on Alvarado Street through the culturally vivid community of
Echo Park.
Glendale Blvd. and Glendale Freeway
The route then turns north onto Glendale Boulevard, which is frequently congested, especially after games and events at
Dodger Stadium. The route then branches northeast onto the Glendale Freeway, a peculiar north-south route with an east-west demarcation. The
Glendale Freeway runs near the communities of
Glassell Park and
Eagle Rock. After its interchange with
Route 134, the route follows a mountain ridge through a valley as it flanks the east side of
Glendale. The freeway ends at
Foothill Boulevard in
La Cañada Flintridge; just before reaching Foothill Boulevard, Route 2 turns off the Glendale Freeway onto the eastbound
Foothill Freeway (Interstate 210) for a short while until reaching the Angeles Crest Highway exit.
Angeles Crest Highway
The route turns north onto the Angeles Crest Highway, cutting through an obscure portion of
Pasadena. This route winds generally east-northeast through the canyons of the
San Gabriel Mountains for over 80 miles (130 miles), before descending through Big Pines and
Wrightwood to the edge of the
Victor Valley approximately 20 miles (32 km) west of
Hesperia and ending at
Route 138. Starting in
La Cañada-Flintridge at an altitude of 1,300' (394m) the highway climbs to a high point of 7,903' (2,395m) at Dawson Saddle. The eastern portions of the Angeles Crest Highway are notoriously dangerous, with many switchbacks and blind curves, and are often closed during occasions of heavy winter snowfall. The highway is generally closed between Islip Saddle and Vincent Gap from mid-December to mid-May due to snow and rockfall.
History
In
1964, Route 2 was defined as a single route from Santa Monica to Wrightwood with no discontinuities. The segment of former US 66 on Santa Monica Boulevard west of the Hollywood Freeway and Lincoln Boulevard was added to Route 2 at this time, since US 66 was truncated to
Pasadena. Route 2 became discontinuous at Routes 101 and 210 in
1965 and
1990, respectively.
The first segment of freeway was built in the
1950s and ran from just west of the Los Angeles River to Avenue 38 in the Atwater district of Los Angeles. This portion was at one time named the
Allesandro Freeway, named after a character from
Helen Hunt Jackson's novel
Ramona. The last segment of freeway, from
Route 134 to Route 210, was built in
1970s. It is named the
Frank G. Lanterman Freeway in honor of the former
California state assemblyman from the La Cañada region.
Santa Monica Boulevard
Starting in July, 1964, Route 2 began in Santa Monica at its junction with Routes 1 and
10. After heading a few blocks northwest on
Lincoln Boulevard, the route turned northeast on
Santa Monica Boulevard, just several blocks from the
Pacific Ocean. The route continued on
Santa Monica Boulevard to
Centinela Avenue.
For its entire length, until the tracks were removed, Santa Monica Boulevard followed the tracks of the
Pacific Electric Railway. In the portion from Holloway Drive in West Hollywood to
Sepulveda Boulevard in West Los Angeles, the tracks were in a separate right-of-way, with two roadways on either side of the tracks. For the rest of the route, the tracks ran in the traffic lanes.
Except for a short portion at its eastern end, Santa Monica Boulevard was adopted as a state highway in 1933. From 1934 to 1936, it was signed as State Route 2. Then it became
U.S. Route 66. When
U.S. Route 66 was truncated to
Pasadena in 1964, Santa Monica Boulevard once again became
State Route 2 as far east as the
Hollywood Freeway. Today, the State Route 2 portion of Santa Monica Boulevard is defined from the Santa Monica/Los Angeles city limits to
US 101.
From 1936 to 1964,
U.S. Route 66 ran along Lincoln Boulevard from its junction with Alternate U. S. 101 (now California Route 1) and California Route 26 (now replaced by Interstate 10) to Santa Monica Boulevard and along Santa Monica Boulevard from Lincoln Boulevard to the Hollywood Freeway. US 66 turned southeast on the Hollywood Freeway with US 101. At that time, Route 2 began on Alvarado Street at the Hollywood Freeway. As is today, Route 2 traversed Alvarado Street and Glendale Boulevard to the Glendale Freeway. Route 2 continued on the Glendale Freeway to a temporary connection with Fletcher Drive at Avenue 38 in the Atwater district of Los Angeles. From the temporary connection, the route ran northeast on Fletcher Drive, and north on Verdugo Road to its south intersection with Cañada Boulevard in Glendale. From the south intersection, Route 2 headed north on Cañada Boulevard to its north intersection with Verdugo Road, north on Verdugo Road, and east on Verdugo Boulevard, before reaching Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada-Flintridge. Route 2 continued approximately one mile southeast on Foothill Boulevard with California Route 118 to Angeles Crest Highway. From Foothill Boulevard, Route 2 continued north on Angeles Crest Highway, where it continues to this day.
Today, Caltrans is
relinquishing the
street-running parts of Route 2 to local cities of which it runs through. In 1996, state law was changed to permit the relinquishment of Route 2 in Santa Monica and West Hollywood. When the relinquishment in Santa Monica went through in 1998, the portion from Route 1 to Centinela Avenue was deleted. The law was changed again in
2001 to allow Route 2 from Route 405 to Moreno Drive to be relinquished to the City of
Los Angeles. In
2003 California Senate Bill 315 was chaptered, acknowledging the relinquishments within Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and from Route 405 to Moreno Drive in Los Angeles, and permitting the relinquishment of Route 2 in Beverly Hills. Whether Route 2 west of Route 101 will stay as a paper route after relinquishment is yet to be determined.
Glendale Freeway
Before the segment of the Glendale Freeway was built between Glendale Boulevard and just west of the Los Angeles River, Route 2 began at the Hollywood Freeway on Santa Monica Boulevard, continued east to Myra Avenue, then north on Myra Avenue, east on Fountain Avenue, northeast on Hyperion Avenue, southeast on Rowena Avenue, southeast on Glendale Boulevard, and northeast on Fletcher Drive to just west of the Los Angeles River. From west of the Los Angeles River, Route 2 continued on the Glendale Freeway to its temporary connection with Fletcher Drive at Avenue 38 and then followed the routing described in the previous paragraph to Route 138 northeast of Wrightwood.
Originally, it was to have been the
Beverly Hills Freeway from Route 405 to Route 101 just east of Vermont Avenue, flowing onto the Glendale Freeway. In fact, the proposed freeway on Route 2 west of Route 101 was the original routing of the "Santa Monica Freeway" (a name which subsequently went to the distantly parallel
Route 10). However, for a variety of political reasons, the department never reached agreement with
Beverly Hills to build the segment through that city. At one time, the department considered building a
cut-and-cover tunnel under Beverly Hills, but even this proved a non-starter, and the freeway plan west of Route 101 was quietly cancelled in 1975. Currently, the Glendale Freeway begins as a stub at Glendale Boulevard. A freeway-wide bridge was built over Glendale Boulevard in hopes that the freeway would be built further west. Today, the bridge serves as the westbound lanes of Route 2, connecting the southwestbound freeway lanes to southbound Glendale Boulevard. A more modest freeway/expressway extension to Route 101 has been discussed.
Planners originally intended for it to connect to the
Hollywood Freeway near the Vermont Avenue interchange, but community opposition killed the project by the 1960s; as a result, during games at nearby
Dodger Stadium, there's often significant congestion in the areas around the freeway's terminus. The Glendale Freeway offers stunning vistas of the eastern
San Fernando Valley, the
Verdugo Mountains, the
Crescenta Valley, and the
San Gabriel Mountains.
Since the 1950s, proposals have been made to extend the Glendale Freeway to the
Antelope Valley Freeway via a
tunnel under the San Gabriels, relieving some of the latter freeway's notorious congestion. The difficulty of designing and building such a route (designated
SR 249) and the cost of insuring it against
earthquakes and
terrorism would undoubtedly make perpetually cash-strapped
Caltrans unable to undertake such an ambitious project.
The section of freeway between the
Ventura Freeway (
134) and the
Foothill Freeway (
210) was largely completed in
1975, but not fully finished until
1979. During this time, the closed freeway was used as a location for several films, including
Coffy,
Corvette Summer,
The Gumball Rally,
Death Race 2000, and several American
television series including "
Adam-12", "
Emergency!" and "
CHiPs". The transition overpass from the eastbound
Ventura Freeway to the northbound Glendale Freeway was prominently featured in the notorious
disaster film Earthquake when a livestock truck and two cars crash over the side of the overpass (a shot completed in miniature special effects).
Other names
Route 2 has the following other names, as designated by various state laws, though some enjoy no common popular usage:
- Allessandro Freeway: From Glendale Boulevard in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles to Route 2's west junction with I-210.
- Angeles Crest Scenic Byway: From Route 2's east junction with I-210 in La Cañada-Flintridge to the Los Angeles/San Bernardino County Line.
- Big Pines Highway: Los Angeles County Highway N4 (Big Pines Highway to the northwest) in Big Pines to the Los Angeles/San Bernardino County Line.
- Frank Lanterman Freeway: From Route 134 to Route 2's west junction with I-210.
Exit list
» Note: Except where prefixed with a letter, postmiles were measured in 1964, based on the alignment as it existed at that time, and don't necessarily reflect current mileage. The numbers reset at county lines; the start and end postmiles in each county are given in the county column.
| County |
Location |
Postmile
|
# |
Destinations |
Notes |
Los Angeles
LA L0.00-82.27 |
Santa Monica |
L0.00 |
|
|
Continuation beyond I-10 |
| L0.00 |
|
|
Interchange |
| Los Angeles |
3.65 |
|
|
Interchange |
| 10.90 |
|
Highland Avenue (SR 170) |
|
12.74
101 5.55 |
|
|
West end of US 101 overlap; interchange |
| See Hollywood Freeway (exits 7-4B) |
101 2.86
12.75 |
|
|
East end of US 101 overlap; interchange |
| West end of freeway |
| 14.21 |
12 |
Glendale Boulevard north |
No eastbound entrance; no exit number eastbound |
| 14.95 |
13A |
Riverside Drive |
Signed as exit 13 eastbound |
| 15.14 |
13A |
|
Signed as exit 13 eastbound |
| 15.52 |
13B |
Fletcher Drive |
Westbound exit and eastbound entrance |
| 16.01 |
14 |
San Fernando Road |
|
| R17.00 |
15A |
Verdugo Road |
Signed as exit 15 eastbound |
| R17.29 |
15B |
York Boulevard |
Westbound exit and eastbound entrance |
| R18.52 |
16 |
Colorado Boulevard, Broadway |
Eastbound exit and westbound entrance |
| R18.81 |
17B |
|
Signed as exits 17A (east) and 17B (west) eastbound |
| Glendale |
R19.05 |
17C |
Holly Drive |
Signed as exit 17A westbound |
| R20.05 |
18 |
Mountain Street |
|
| R23.00 |
|
Verdugo Boulevard |
Eastbound exit and westbound entrance |
| R23.44 |
21C |
Foothill Boulevard |
Eastbound exit and westbound entrance |
R23.16
210 R18.87 |
21B |
|
West end of I-210 overlap; no exit number westbound |
| La Cañada Flintridge | East end of freeway |
210 R19.88
24.41 |
|
|
East end of I-210 overlap; interchange |
| Angeles National Forest |
26.99 |
|
Angeles Forest Highway |
|
| 64.09 |
|
|
Closed |
San Bernardino
SBD 0.00-6.36 |
|
6.36 |
|
|
|
Further Information
Get more info on 'California State Route 2'.
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