DEL NORTE COUNTY, Calif. \u00a0\u2014\u00a0In March 1972, Kurt Stremberg\u2019s parents gave him a predawn ride from their house in northwest California to his friend\u2019s home in the tiny town of Klamath, about 20 miles south of Crescent City on Highway 101.<\/p>\n
Stremberg, then 24, and his buddy were going to hitch a ride on a log truck bound for San Francisco, catch a flight to Europe, and see the world.<\/p>\n
His parents, Edwin and Aili Stremberg, said a quick goodbye, then started driving home. It was still dark. And raining hard.<\/p>\n
In the few minutes it had taken to drop their son off, a landslide-plagued portion of the highway \u2014 ominously named Last Chance Grade \u2014 had crumbled. The Strembergs\u2019 Ford sedan went over the cliff, killing them both.<\/p>\n
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For decades, residents of California\u2019s remote northwest corner have been pleading with government officials to do something about Last Chance Grade, an eroding, three-mile stretch of highway hugging the fog-shrouded cliffs between the redwood forest and the Pacific Ocean. <\/p>\n
It is a critical thoroughfare \u2014 the only viable route linking Crescent City, a tsunami-prone town<\/a> of 6,200 people, with neighboring Humboldt County and the rest of the state. <\/p>\n But 53 years after the Strembergs\u2019 death, the two-lane road is still perilous. Perched atop four active landslides, its pavement warped and cracked by constant land movement, Last Chance Grade is so unstable that it was reduced to one-way traffic for nine years straight<\/a>, reopening in October 2023. Last week, it was down to one lane again.<\/p>\n A motorcycle cruises Highway 101 over a retaining wall propping up Last Chance Grade south of Crescent City. <\/p>\n (Mike Zacchino\/For The Times)<\/p>\n \u201cYou look at the kind of problems we\u2019ve had over the years, you\u2019d think there would be some kind of movement,\u201d said Stremberg, now a 77-year-old real estate agent living in Crescent City. \u201cIt was ignored, as long as a lane of the highway could stay open. We need a solution to something that\u2019s been a problem forever.\u201d <\/p>\n Now, after decades of patching holes and building retaining walls \u2014 temporary repairs that have cost more than $125 million since 1997 \u2014 the California Dept. of Transportation has settled on a long-term solution: a 6,000-foot tunnel through the redwoods that would bypass Last Chance Grade\u2019s fast-eroding cliffs.<\/a> <\/p>\n It would become the longest highway tunnel in California, far surpassing the 4,233-foot Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite National Park that was built in 1933. Running between 100 and 400 feet below ground, it would be engineered to absorb and dissipate land movement at the southern entrance.<\/p>\n The Last Chance Grade Tunnel would cost $2.1 billion \u2014 an eye-popping amount that Caltrans and elected officials say they are still trying to figure out how to fund<\/a>. <\/p>\n After years of debating numerous alternatives<\/a> \u2014 including maintaining Last Chance Grade as-is, rerouting it farther inland, and using dewatering wells to slow the landslide \u2014 Caltrans settled on the costly tunnel plan last year. <\/p>\n If funding can be cobbled together, construction is expected to begin as early as 2030, with the tunnel potentially opening by 2038.<\/p>\n Artist rendering of a proposed tunnel to bypass of a hazardous section of the 101 highway known as Last Chance Grade. <\/p>\n (California Dept. of Transportation)<\/p>\n This summer, the California Transportation Commission allocated $40 million to formally kick off the project\u2019s design phase. California State Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the North Coast, has called<\/a> the funding a \u201cmajor milestone,\u201d noting that $50 million had already been invested<\/a> in environmental reviews. <\/p>\n But the process, McGuire has said, has taken too long. <\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s be honest, if the biggest highway in the Bay Area or L.A. kept falling into the Pacific, the problem would have been fixed long ago,\u201d McGuire said in a statement to The Times. \u201cLast Chance Grade and Highway 101 isn\u2019t just a road \u2014 it\u2019s a lifeline. And every truckload of goods, every visitor to the redwoods, and every emergency response depends on reliable access through this critical corridor.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents and elected officials say it has been an ongoing struggle to draw outside attention to Last Chance Grade, despite its long-known dangers, because the region is so remote and economically depressed.<\/p>\n A retaining wall beneath Last Chance Grade, a precarious part of Highway 101 in Del Norte County. <\/p>\n (California Dept. of Transportation)<\/p>\n Del Norte County is home to just 27,000 people. The median household income of $66,780 is just 70% of the state median of $96,334. <\/p>\n The industries that once defined the place, logging and fishing, have either collapsed or are struggling<\/a>. And there is not much room to grow, since more than 80% of the county\u2019s land is under state or federal control, mostly as parks, national forests or wildlife preserves.<\/p>\n A 2018 Caltrans study concluded<\/a> that an emergency one-year full closure of Last Chance Grade would devastate the region, resulting in the loss of up to 3,800 jobs and $456 million from the local economy.<\/p>\n Here, residents and elected officials say it is difficult to compete with critical infrastructure projects in wealthier, more populated places such as the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where ground movement has turned Palos Verdes Drive South<\/a> into an asphalt roller coaster near President Trump\u2019s golf course<\/a>, and coastal Monterey County, where landslides have kept portions of the tourist-heavy Highway 1 near Big Sur closed for more than two years<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re so rural up here, and we tend to be forgotten,\u201d said Del Norte County Supervisor Valerie Starkey, who added that every time Last Chance Grade is closed then reopened, \u201cwe\u2019re all just waiting for it to fail again.\u201d <\/p>\n A retaining wall along Highway 101. More than $100 million has been spent on temporary repairs to Last Chance Grade since 1997. <\/p>\n (Mike Zacchino\/For The Times)<\/p>\n Highway 101 is the only viable route between Crescent City and Klamath, population 800 or so. When Last Chance Grade is closed, the only alternative \u2014 aside from steep, unpaved logging roads \u2014 is a 449-mile, eight-hour detour circling through<\/a> Redding and southern Oregon. <\/p>\n Many children in Klamath attend school in Crescent City and rely upon the campus\u2019s free meals. So when rocks and mud buried Last Chance Grade in February 2021, Starkey said, school employees hauled lunches to the base of the landslide and handed them to Caltrans crews to take across to kids on the other side. <\/p>\n She added that Klamath residents must traverse the road to reach the small hospital in Crescent City \u2014 and that residents there use it to access specialized medical care, including chemotherapy and opioid addiction treatment, more than 80 miles south in Humboldt County. <\/p>\n Starkey said the $2.1 billion price tag for the tunnel is daunting, but \u201cwe\u2019re just hoping this is a better option fiscally\u201d in the long run.<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) \u2014 who put together a Last Chance Grade stakeholder group comprising local agencies, Indigenous tribes, businesses and environmental groups a decade ago<\/a> \u2014 said he hopes to get some federal funding through the U.S. Department of Transportation\u2019s Mega Grant Program<\/a> for major, complex projects. <\/p>\n Yet the prospects of the Trump administration supporting the project are uncertain at best. The president and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom are locked in seemingly unending political battles<\/a>, and Trump has already tried to claw back funding for more high-profile California transportation initiatives, including its high-speed rail project. <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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