East-West Freeway Nears Completion

The Santa Monica Freeway was nearing completion, and the latest 2.5-mile section to be finished opened with fanfare. As a Dixieland band played, the Goodyear blimp hovered overhead, swinging a tire from a 150-foot rope to rip through a ribbon just west of La Cienega Boulevard. The freeway’s official opening was in 1966. Overall, the cost of its 17 miles, from downtown to the Pacific Ocean, came to more than $210 million, or more than $12 million a mile. Construction of the city’s first east-west freeway took nearly a decade, beginning in 1957 with a bridge over the Los Angeles River.