MULHOLLAND MAGIC CITY'S 'BACKBONE' HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.

Byline: Lisa Mascaro Staff Writer

What started out nearly a century ago as a road to nowhere now stretches high atop Los Angeles, from the hills to the sea, from mountaintop mansions through expanses of wilderness?

Mulholland Drive in the city, Mulholland Highway farther west, draws motorists, sightseers, hikers and smoochers to favorite spots along its 45-mile route, each special, each unique.

There's the the beach to the west, the grand Griffith Observatory to the east, and in between a collection that's pure Southern California: Mansions and mobile homes, movie lots and riding trails, biker hangouts and mountain bike terrain, an old missile site, and car after car twisting and turning along the drive.

``Mulholland is kind of an interesting theme in what most people think about is Los Angeles,'' said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

``It's got everything from the glamour of Hollywood to the ... danger. ... I look at it as the backbone of the city.''

Mulholland got built the way much of L.A. started - developers took the lead, building it as a gateway to their hillside homes and the San Fernando Valley below.

At the then-handsome cost of $1 million and with a namesake none other than William Mulholland, the man who brought water to the city through the groundbreaking aqueduct, the road opened in December 1924. It came to a sudden halt at Sepulveda Boulevard to the west and at a cliff near what is now the bridge over the 101 at Cahuenga, said historian Matt Roth, the Automobile Club of Southern California's historian.

``It's the perfect highway for Los Angeles,'' said Roth, repeating a comment a colleague made to him: ``It cost $1 million, it didn't go anywhere, but it looked fabulous.''

``I would say that its chief significance is it shows that major highways can be built without being part of a major transportation system. Things get built for reasons that are not necessarily logical.''

Today though, Mulholland Drive stretches all across the Valley to Woodland Hills, where it turns up to join the 101, while Mulholland Highway picks up the route in Calabasas and takes the Los Angeles County portion another 28 miles to the sea.

It's a meandering, mostly two-lane road that again finds itself in history's spotlight as the boundary line between the Valley and the rest of the city under the secession proposal going before voters Nov. 5.

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude, a Westsider whose district had included parts of the area, said Mulholland is the place to go ``if you want to commute with nature and see the blue skies and see the views across the city and see the ocean. ... The wonderful thing about the present state is there are accesses.''

Environmentalists in the '60s derailed plans for a high-speed highway along Mulholland that would have connected the Hollywood Hills to the Westside, reflecting a movement that preserves the area today.

``This was the rallying cry for the environmentalists,'' Braude said. ``It would have opened up the development for all kind of hotels, high-story apartment buildings. I didn't want that. I wanted to save the Santa Monica Mountains.

``Those terrible plans were gradually, after many, many, battles, were won.''

In fact, much of the land straddling the highway is in public hands now, scooped up for open space preservation and recreation across the sprawling Santa Monica Mountains.

The state parks system is the largest landowner with some 20,000 acres, followed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy with 15,000 acres.

In 1992, the city adopted the Mulholland Highway Specific Plan to further guide development on its 17-mile stretch.

``It's a scenic parkway in the city. ... That's why over time there's been an important investment in public open space,'' said city Planning Director Con Howe.

While developers built the initial stretch, the lack of building kept part of the highway through the Valley unpaved, now a 7.5-mile path known as Dirt Mulholland that's filled mornings and afternoons with hikers and mountain bikers soaking up nature.

Though city maps show the area someday becoming a road, Howe said that's not likely.

``If the city had money to spend they'd be making improvements along the rest of Mulholland, not paving the dirt part,'' he said. ``We do think Dirt Mulholland is an important access point to public open space.''

Along Mulholland live many millionaires and some not so rich, who share the scrubby terrain with coyotes, snakes and other wildlife that make their homes in the rugged terrain along the highway.

There's the community of Malibu Lake, with its boats on the water in the middle of the hills, the old movie ranches where Westerns were filmed and the Rock Store where bikers hang out on weekends - comedian Jay Leno has been known to be part of the crowd.

The old Nike missile site just below Encino Reservoir offers a panoramic view from its now defunct lookout tower, while AT&T's International Earth Station a few miles west shoots long-distance telecommunications from a trio of dishes that make the highway look, for a moment, like the surface of the moon.

Toward Malibu, there are vineyards where rows and rows of grapes line the hillside in picture-perfect snapshots.

Back at the crossing with the San Diego Freeway is what the city calls the Institutional Corridor - a collection of some of the area's more prestigious private schools, as well as the Skirball Cultural Center, University of Judaism, churches and temples.

In Hollywood, the road offers scenic hiking at Franklin Canyon, as well as lookouts galore, like one to the north that allows sightseers to take in Universal City and the Valley above, and another to the south that shows off the grand old buildings of Hollywood.

The drive comes to a sudden close at the bridge to the 101 freeway, though a trickle of it quietly picks up across the way, around Lake Hollywood, before heading toward the majestic observatory where at night, the city's lights twinkle like stars below while upward gazers can see the real ones overhead.

``Mulholland Drive and Mulholland Highway is really symbolic,'' Edmiston said. ``You can look out to both sides - the Valley to downtown. It shows what a world-class city we have in Los Angeles.''

CAPTION(S):

10 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) From a Mulholland Drive overlook, Milagros Leon and Francisco Delgado enjoy the view of downtown Los Angeles.

(2 -- color) Thirteen-year-old Natalie Dyachenko examines some shells she picked up at Leo Carrillo State Beach, located at the end of Mulholland Highway at the western edge of Los Angeles County.

(3 -- color) The Rock Store on Mulholland Highway is a popular weekend hangout for motorcyclists, including comedian Jay Leno, host of ``The Tonight Show.''

(4 -- color) At left, a hiker takes a drink while standing on top of a Nike missile silo located near `Dirt Mulholland' - an unpaved stretch of road in the Santa Monica Mountains.

(5 -- color) Linda Ross takes her horse and goat for a walk along Mulholland Highway in Calabasas on a recent summer evening.

(6 -- color) A 7.5 path know as ``Dirt Mulholland'' in the Santa Monica Mountains is filled mornings and afternoons with hikers and mountain bikers looking to soak up nature.

(7 -- 10 -- color) no caption (From map - Leo Carillo State Beach, Frank Lloyd Wright house, Nike missile silo, Universal City junction)

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

Map:

MULHOLLAND HIGHWAY VISTAS

Warren Huskey/Staff Artist