A freeway along Vallejo’s scenic waterfront seems like a mind-boggling bad idea today, but in the 1950s it won initial approvals at local and state levels and remained on the drawing board into the 1970s before finally being scrapped. Early accounts of the plan include a May 4, 1956, Vallejo News-Chronicle article describing a long-range city proposal for a 2.4-mile-long, partly elevated freeway on the Vallejo side of the Mare Island Strait, from Sonoma Boulevard, just south of the Ferry Building, to Sears Point Road.
That stretch starts from the south as Mare Island Parkway and turns into Wilson Avenue. Both streets can be busy and will take motorists north to Sears Point Road, or State Route 37 – the most direct link between Vallejo and Marin and Sonoma counties to the west. But the route along the waterfront has several stop lights and signs and isn’t a noisy, high-speed freeway that would have raised environmental concerns and created a significant barrier between the Mare Island Strait and both commercial and residential areas of Vallejo.
The waterfront freeway was part of a proposed transportation network expanding Highway 40 – now Interstate 80 – and linking it with Sears Point Road. The plan also included a freeway extension eastward to Benicia – now Interstate 780. Some of the Highway 40 work began much earlier, in the mid-1930s.
“The waterfront freeway started out as part of Vallejo’s urban renewal,” says former Mayor Terry Curtola, who as a city c.
