December 30, 1940: Los Angeles' 1st Freeway Opens

December 30, 1940: The Arroyo Seco Parkway opens, along the seasonal river of the same name, running 8 miles northeast from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena. It is the 1st of many freeways in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

It became part of the historic U.S. Route 66, but is no longer designated as such. Rather, it is California Route 110. In 1954, it was renamed the Pasadena Freeway. In 2010, its original name was restored.

In the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Judge Doom (played by Christopher Lloyd) lays out his plan for such a road: "Eight lanes of shimmering cement, running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past." (Yeah, surrre! He continued.) "I see a place where people get on and off the freeway, on and off, off and on, all day, all night! Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards, reaching as far as the eye can see! My God, it'll be beautiful!"

In other words, he foresaw freeway exits, and the shopping centers that sprang up around them, serving as the new "downtown shopping districts" what became suburban America after World War II. Except that the film took place in 1947, when said 8 lanes were already in place in real life.

They would be the first of many, strangling Southern California in asphalt, and choking it in smog, because all those cars would be producing carbon dioxide, drifting east until the gas smacked into the San Gabriel Mountains, which would push it back, causing it, with nowhere else to go, to settle dangerously over what had become America's 3rd-largest city after World War II, and by 1970, the 2nd-largest.

*

December 30, 1940 was a Monday. TV sitcom writer, director and producer James Burrows was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled for the NHL. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.