The Road to Lompoc

Santa Barbara County, California
August, 1973

Gaviota Pass in 2010, looking north

We had been on the road for four days, and we were about to drive through our first tunnel. After driving 2,670 numbing miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, it did not take much to animate three kids in the back seat of a Vista Cruiser station wagon. However, it was the sign just after the tunnel through Gaviota Pass that excited all of us:  Lompoc Next Exit. Our travels were about to come to an end.

Lompoc and Vandenberg Air Force Base have had a close relationship for over 50 years now. It has been a way of life for military families to move their lives from one base to another and another, and thousands of families accomplished the same journey to Vandenberg Air Force Base as my family did in August 1973. Because our expedition from Hahn Air Base in Germany to Vandenberg had eye-opening layovers in London and Florida, we probably took a little bit longer than most families in getting from their old base to Vandenberg. After eight weeks in transit, we were still in Florida, and the last part of our adventures entailed a cross-country drive in our just-bought station wagon. This drive would be the end to our assignment in Germany which started eerily enough with a cross-country drive from the Mojave Desert of California to New Jersey only four years earlier.

Lompoc Next Exit. I scooted up to rest my arms on the back of my mother’s seat. Peeking my head around my mother, I let my eyes drift ahead so I could spot the exit before anyone else. The off-ramp looked like many freeway exits that we had passed the previous days, and I knew that Lompoc had to be close by. The station wagon turned left and crossed the freeway, and we were on Highway 1 and on the last fragment of our journey to Lompoc.

Highway 1 to Lompoc in 2010

We were confronted by hills and signs that cautioned us that we were not as near as I thought. We were on a scenic road, designated so just the year before, and I knew you have to be on a scenic road for awhile to enjoy the scenery. Then I saw it … Lompoc   21.  Twenty-one more miles! How was I going to hold in the anticipation that had been mushrooming for days for another 20 minutes? Those 20 minutes were some of the longest in my life, and with each bend in the road, my enthusiasm dampened. My brother, sister, and I soon resorted to that tested trick which shortens those long drives – “Are we there yet?” We were comforted by my mother  – "We're close and should be there in a few minutes."

I sighed when I saw we were going around another bend in the road, but my eyes soon widened when I saw homes on top of a ridge to the left. We all moved closer to the side windows to get a closer look at the homes, and I saw a column of grass flattened down on the hillside and some square pieces of cardboard at the top. Kids sledding down the hill! My brother and I promptly proclaimed that is where we wanted to live and we would sled down that hill. Seconds later we were at a stop sign with more buildings in sight, and only minutes later disembarked at our motel.  Because base housing was not in our near future, we did not know where we were going to live or where tomorrow would take us. But we did know that we had arrived in Lompoc, our new hometown.

The rural landscape of Highway 1 south of Lompoc has not changed much in the last 40 years. The highway still follows the same route with only slight adjustments to the highway – some passing lanes, blue call boxes along the roadside, and a traffic light instead of a stop sign as you enter the Valley of Flowers. The road to Jalama Beach as it winds up the hills remains indistinguishable from the first time I saw it. Ranch buildings and grazing cattle still dominate the scenery along the highway, but if you look carefully, you can see some alterations to the views of the past. A vineyard on Santa Rita Road; the molding of hills by the old Johns-Manville, now Celite, diatomaceous earth mine getting closer to the highway; military communication facilities on the top of Sudden Peak.

Nevertheless these alterations are minuscule and cannot fiddle with my first memories of the road to Lompoc. It was this road that delivered me to my adolescence and to the place where I transformed from a child into an adult. I reflect on that every time I drive along Highway 1.