This postcard of the new Arroyo Seco Parkway, a name that has been restored after decades of being called the Pasadena Freeway, has been listed on EBay. For more than a year, drivers have had to contend with construction of a concrete divider that replaced metal guardrails installed years ago, so it may come as a surprise that the parkway originally had nothing to keep cars from crossing into oncoming traffic. Highway engineers eventually learned that this was a bad idea, and after long experimentation with guardrails, customarily include center dividers in their plans. Bidding starts at $2.66.
ladailymirror.com 
Larry
All freeways in So Cal were built with a divider about the heighth of a standard curb and about 3 feet or so wide. When I was a kid, they were building the Santa Ana Freeway, now the I5, through Downey, and that was the divider. It wasn’t until the mid to late 50’s that engineers started experimenting with different type of restraints to keep cars from going across the divider, and to keep them from bouncing back into traffic if they hit the divider. Before that, there were many terrible headon collisions, at great loss of life. The #1 lane was known as the suicide lane.
LikeLike
@Duane: In fact, according to Times accounts, highway engineers wondered whether the guardrails increased accidents because people were running into them!
LikeLike