Back when PCH felt Mother Nature’s wrath, and a water taxi went from Malibu to Santa Monica

It’s hard to remember during California’s five-year drought, but heavy rains often used to close Pacific Coast Highway in the Malibu area.

When it looked as if El Niño rains would drench Southern California earlier this year, Caltrans took a series of steps to keep PCH open. But the rains never materialized.

One of the toughest years for PCH was 1979.

A slow, torturous rock slide closed Pacific Coast Highway twice that year— from April 14 to May 6, then again from May 8 to May 20. An estimated 25,000 commuters struggled to find alternative routes.

It was so bad officials created a water taxi service from Malibu to Santa Monica.

As The Times reported:

One of the most troublesome landslides along Pacific Coast Highway occurred April 14, 1979, when tons of earthen debris rumbled onto the roadway near Big Rock Drive in Malibu. State highway workers eventually built a huge wall of wood and girders to protect motorists.

Last month, the wall was removed. The slide area has been sloped and covered with a giant wire net to keep it stable. …

… in the last three years, the Pacific Coast Highway’s heavily traveled 26-mile-long Malibu artery has been closed a total of 69 days because of fire, landslide and flood disasters, according to Caltrans.

Last year alone, a landslide closed the main road to Malibu for more than a month, a situation just now culminating in a repair bill of about $7 million for an 800-foot stretch of highway. …

During these two shutdowns, frustrated Malibu commuters were forced to take both a time- and gasoline-consuming detour either over the winding roads of the Santa Monica Mountains or the traffic-choked Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

At the same time, all kinds of proposals rained on Caltrans. They ranged from blasting away the cliff with dynamite to building an expensive causeway out in the ocean that would permanently detour around the slide area.

In recent years, officials have spent millions in creative engineering to strengthen PCH against a double threat: rocks and heavy rain coming down the coastal mountains and high surf crashing in from the ocean. Steel rock netting, concrete debris barriers and fortified sea walls now adorn the iconic route from Santa Monica to Ventura, the highway’s roughly 30 most perilous miles.

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