In June 2022, the California Transportation Commission voted unanimously to formally end the 50-year debate over the SR-710 freeway "connector" in California's San Gabriel Valley. It was a long and sustained preservation battle that included a number of local, state, and national advocacy groups including the National Trust for Historic Preservation, looking to stop a project that would have demolished almost 1,000 homes and 6,000 trees in a six-mile area, displacing 2,400 people and cutting through the heart of four National Register historic districts while skirting the boundaries of two others. The National Trust listed this community on America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list—1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993.

One of most significant milestones in this fight was the federal court injunction issued on July 19, 1999 that halted the project and led to the eventual victory by the coalition of partners.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of that injunction and Betsy Merritt, Deputy General Counsel, spent more than 35 years of her 40 plus year career at the National Trust working to support the communities that would have been impacted by this project. To commemorate this anniversary, Merritt shared a few words on her experience working to protect these historic communities in Pasadena, South Pasadena, and El Sereno, California.

How it Began

Transcript: So 1988, I'd been there for four years, a little over four years, and there had been some other highway battles that I'd been directly involved with in Mobile, Alabama, Fort Worth, [Texas], and so we were doing a lot of highway related stuff. It was at the 1988 preservation conference, and it was Claire Bogaard [former advisor for the National Trust], she approached me at the conference and said we've got to get the National Trust involved in this 710 battle, that's how it got started. And 1989 was the first year when South Pasadena and the corridor was listed on the 11 Most Endangered list. And it stayed on the 11 Most Endangered list for five years. It was put on the list virtually right away, and that was an important part of our advocacy strategy, was that level of national publicity about it. And just the antiquated approach to transportation was just so egregious that, that really helped us in a way, I mean, this was not a subtle issue. It was so extreme in its level of destruction that it just made no sense at all.

A United Community

Transcript: One of the really interesting things about the corridor is that it included a really wide range of economic communities, really much lower economic status at the southern end, and at the northern end in Pasadena pretty wealthy communities. So they were all united, should we say, in the fight. There was really broad opposition because the destruction would've been just so extraordinary.

The Injunction

Transcript: So I mentioned that they modified the project in response to our opposition by proposing these trenches that would go kind of under the historic district and you'd keep the historic neighborhood on top. But then subsequently after we won our big injunction in federal court in July 19, 1999, in fact it would be the 25th anniversary of that injunction. So always a big event to celebrate because that injunction stayed in place for a long time, and really it provided us with a lot of the bargaining leverage as things went forward.

So in response to us getting that injunction, then the agency started making efforts to revise its plans in a way that would be more acceptable. So one of the things they proposed was to build the highway as a complete tunnel, not just these trenches going under the historic, but they proposed doing it completely as a tunnel, which of course would be ridiculously expensive, but also in a very earthquake prone area of the country, raises all kinds of questions about the viability, just the technical viability of it, and ultimately that was rejected as well.

A Moment of Victory