In what is surely the most bizarre preservationist move ever, Los Angeles citizens are rallying to save the 110 freeway to Pasadena. Why, that’s one of my favorite freeways ever! Since it’s about as old as Los Angeles, it’s only two lanes—but still does the job, running through the Arroyo Seco (where some of the first rocketry tests were conducted).

LOS ANGELES — You don’t typically hear Southern Californians rhapsodize about a freeway.

But the 8.2-mile route between downtown Los Angeles and suburban Pasadena isn’t typical.

Opened in 1940, the oldest freeway in the West follows the meanders of the Arroyo Seco wash past parks and lush embankments, and under bridges and through tunnels built with the elegance of a bygone era.

Known variously as the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the Pasadena Freeway or simply “the 110,” it also carries motorists past some of the city’s oldest — and toughest — neighborhoods as its tight curves open and close views of mountain peaks and downtown skyscrapers.

(Preservationists: Don’t change West’s 1st freeway)

Below: Jan and Dean discuss Pasadena.