What was the first highway built in California?
History of California's state highway system
The first state road was authorized on March 26, 1895, when a law created the post of "Lake Tahoe Wagon Road Commissioner" to maintain the Lake Tahoe Wagon Road (the 1852 Johnson's Cut-off of the California Trail), now US 50 from Smith Flat - 3 miles (5km) east of Placerville - to the Nevada state line.[1] The 58 mile[2] (93km) road had been operated as a toll road until 1886, when El Dorado County bought it; the county deeded the road to the state on February 28, 1896.[3] Funding was only enough for minimal improvements, including a stone bridge over the South Fork American River in 1901.[4]
California State Route 133
As part of its construction of concrete roads, started by a 1913 bond issue, Orange County paved the county road through Laguna Canyon, connecting State Highway Route 2 (the forerunner of U.S. Hwy. 101 and I-5) at Irvine with Laguna Beach, by 1917. The road was added to the state highway system in 1933 as Route 185, an unsigned designation. The entire route was added to the new California Freeway and Expressway System in 1959; the planned upgrade had already been named the Laguna Freeway by the California Highway Commission on November 26, 1957. The highway received a sign route number—State Route 133—in the 1964 renumbering.