The Waldo Grade is a highway

grade Grade most commonly refers to: * Grading in education, a measurement of a student's performance by educational assessment (e.g. A, pass, etc.) * A designation for students, classes and curricula indicating the number of the year a student has reach ...

between the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in California, United States. The structure links San Francisco—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peni ...

and Marin City along

U.S. Route 101 U.S. Route 101, or U.S. Highway 101 (US 101), is a major north–south highway that traverses the states of California, Oregon, and Washington on the West Coast of the United States. It is part of the United States Numbered Highway Syst ...

and State Route 1. It is defined as the stretch of roadway between the Spencer Offramp and Marin City, within the city of

Sausalito Sausalito (Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, and about north of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. Sausalito's p ...

. This grade is traversed by a full

freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway, and expressway. Other similar terms ...

multi-lane highway facility. This portion of US 101/SR 1 is an important link in surface transportation connecting the city of San Francisco to

Marin County Marin County ( ) is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is ac ...

and the North Bay. Nearby locations to the Waldo Grade include: the city of Sausalito, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model,

The Marine Mammal Center The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC) is a private, non-profit United States, U.S. organization that was established in 1975 for the purpose of rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing marine mammals who are injured, sick or abandoned. It was founded in S ...

and the

Golden Gate National Recreation Area The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area protecting of ecologically and historically significant landscapes surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of the park is land formerly used by the Unite ...

. It, and nearby Waldo Point along

Richardson Bay Richardson Bay (originally Richardson's Bay) is a shallow, ecology, ecologically rich arm of San Francisco Bay, managed under by the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, created under a joint powers agreement by the County of Marin, Town of Tiburon, C ...

between Sausalito and

Mill Valley Mill Valley is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located about north of San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and from Napa Valley. The population was 14,231 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mill Valley is lo ...

, is named after 1850s California politician William Waldo.

Robin Williams Tunnel

A tunnel officially known as the Robin Williams Tunnel (previously and formally referred to as the Waldo Tunnel) is located at the highest elevation on US 101/SR 1 along the Waldo Grade. The first bore of the tunnel was completed in 1937 and the second in 1954, with the ''Waldo Sidehill Viaducts''. The archways at the south-facing ends of the bores were painted in rainbows after the lobbying by a

Caltrans The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an Executive (government), executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the Government of California#State agencies, cabinet-level California State Tran ...

employee,

Robert Halligan Robert W. Halligan (1926 – February 15, 1999) was an American engineer and information officer of the California Department of Transportation. During his 45-year career there, he helped California State Route 24, state Highway 24, and convin ...

, and for this reason the tunnel is sometimes unofficially referred to as the Rainbow Tunnel. After the death of actor and comedian

Robin Williams Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedie ...

in 2014, a petition was started on

change.org Change.org is a website which allows users to create and sign petitions in an attempt to advance various social causes by raising awareness and influencing decision-makers. The site is a US-based for-profit company and claims to have 551 million ...

to rename the Waldo Tunnel as the Robin Williams Tunnel, because Williams, a longtime resident of Marin County, is credited with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance. A bill submitted by California Assemblyman

Marc Levine Marc Levine (born April 26, 1974) is an American politician, who served in the California State Assembly representing the California's 10th State Assembly district, 10th district between 2012 and 2022. A member of the Democratic Party (United S ...

after consulting with Williams' family passed the

California State Assembly The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature (the upper house being the California State Senate). The Assembly convenes, along with the State Senate, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, Califor ...

in April 2015 on a vote of 77–0, and the

State Senate In the United States, the state legislature is the legislative branch in each of the 50 U.S. states. A legislature generally performs state duties for a state in the same way that the United States Congress performs national duties at ...

in June 2015 on a vote of 37–0. The official sign was installed in 2016. Tunnel near Golden Gate Bridge - San Francisco

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and the

are hidden from the northern approach of US 101/SR 1 by hills, automobile travelers heading south along this route get their first views of the city and its iconic bridge upon exiting the tunnel's southbound bore.

1982 landslides

On January 4–5, 1982, the freeway was completely closed for 24 hours as a result of two

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides ...

s on the Waldo Grade caused by a severe storm in the San Francisco Bay area, and partially closed for nearly two weeks. The first landslide was on January 4, with rock, mud and trees falling onto the highway blocking the southbound lanes and two of the northbound lanes. A second

debris avalanche Debris flows are geological phenomena in which water-laden masses of soil and fragmented rock flow down mountainsides, funnel into stream channels, entrain objects in their paths, and form thick, muddy deposits on valley floors. They generally ...

began about below the freeway at about 9:35pm on January 5, in fill material that had been stable since highway construction in 1953. The slide first carried away a house on Sausalito Boulevard, and then destroyed a house below it at 85 Crescent Avenue, killing resident Sally Baum. Three hundred residents were evacuated to a Red Cross shelter. A crack developed in the roadway and, concerned that the highway might fail,

CalTrans The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an Executive (government), executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the Government of California#State agencies, cabinet-level California State Tran ...

engineers closed all northbound lanes for twelve days while the road was reinforced with vertical pilings. The closure cut Marin County off from the

San Francisco Peninsula The San Francisco Peninsula is a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. On its northern tip is the City and County of San Francisco. Its southern base is Los Altos and Mountain View, ...

. Thousands of Marin County residents were stranded in San Francisco who could not figure out how to get to Marin by using the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge I-580 or the bus lines that serve Marin from the East Bay. Some of the earth from the landslide was later transported to

to create a building pad for the Shelter Point office complex.

In fiction

The tunnel is featured in the

Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western (genre), Western TV series ''Rawhide (TV series), Rawhide'', Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Ma ...

film ''

Dirty Harry ''Dirty Harry'' is a 1971 American action-thriller film produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry (film series), ''Dirty Harry'' series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first appearance as San Francisco Polic ...

'' and the

Humphrey Bogart Humphrey DeForest Bogart ( ; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American actor. His performances in classic Hollywood cinema made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart ...

film ''

Dark Passage ''Dark Passage'' (1946) is a crime novel by David Goodis. It was the basis for the 1947 film noir of the same name. The film implements extensive use of the first-person camera technique. Plot Vincent Parry, wrongly convicted of murdering ...

.'' The honking of horns in the tunnel, often done deliberately for the sake of hearing the echoes, was the inspiration for harmonicist Bruce "Creeper" Kurnow's composition "Honk If You Love Harmonica." In the film ''

Bicentennial Man "The Bicentennial Man" is a novelette in the ''Robot'' series by American writer Isaac Asimov. According to the foreword in ''Robot Visions'', Asimov was approached to write a story, along with a number of other authors who would do the same, ...

'' (starring Robin Williams), a futuristic view of a relocated highway bypasses the historic Waldo Grade.''Bicentennial Man'' film storyboards
/ref> At the beginning of the 2015

Pixar Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney ...

film '' Inside Out'', the main character's family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. Their first view of the Golden Gate Bridge - and the film's title card - appear as they emerge from the Robin Williams Tunnel.

References

External links

* {{Commons category-inline, Robin Williams Tunnel California State Route 1 Transport infrastructure completed in 1937 Roads in Marin County, California U.S. Route 101

Robin Williams Tunnel

1982 landslides

In fiction

See also

References

External links