The ghosts of L.A.’s unbuilt freeways — a wide median here, a stubby endpoint there

An undated vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection shows a freeway landscape from before the 605, the 105 and large sections of other freeways we travel today. The 2: Glendale Freeway The 5: Golden State / Santa Ana / San Diego Freeway The 10: Santa Monica / San Bernardino Freeway The 90: Marina / Richard M. Nixon Freeway The 91: Gardena / Artesia / Riverside Freeway The 101: Hollywood / Santa Ana / Ventura Freeway The 105: Glenn Anderson / Century Freeway The 110: Arroyo Seco Parkway / Harbor / Pasadena Freeway The 134: Ventura Freeway / President Barack H. Obama Highway The 210: Foothill Freeway The 405: San Diego Freeway The 605: San Gabriel River Freeway The 710: Long Beach Freeway What is now the Santa Monica Freeway first went by the drafting-board name of Olympic Freeway, for the boulevard it would parallel. The ones that didn’t happen, for which you may breathe a prayer of gratitude to the cosmos as you read: The Whitnall Freeway would have run for 27 miles, from the ocean through the Santa Monica Mountains via Malibu Canyon, up to the west end of the Valley, then turned east over the Valley floor to meet up with the Hollywood and Golden State freeways — possibly running parallel to and between the actual Ventura and 118 freeways, like the concrete in a concrete sandwich. He was evidently named for the poet, George Gordon Byron, aka Lord Byron, and Whitnall’s vision for L.A. held the poetic — “Los Angeles is predestined to be the greatest city on the American continent” — coupled with the practical — “Thus far we have just ‘happened.’ We must now plan.” The Reseda Freeway would have taken drivers from the ocean through Rustic Canyon in Pacific Palisades, over the Mulholland crest, and north paralleling Reseda Boulevard, through Porter Ranch and the Santa Susana Mountains to Newhall and beyond. One state highway engineer mourned the public’s apparent belief that “if you get rid of freeways, you won’t have any problems.” All of this broke like a perfect storm over what turned out to be the last real freeway to be built in L.A. County, the I-105, officially the Glenn Anderson Freeway, originally the El Segundo-Norwalk Freeway, known ever after as the Century Freeway.