A Man's Quest Reverberates Up and Down State

This will ring a familiar bell for motorists -- at least those with really long memories.

Nearly 100 years after they first appeared, the El Camino Real bells are back.

An ambitious campaign to restore the highway markers along the 700 miles of California's "Royal Road" reached Los Angeles this month.

Cast-iron replicas of the mission-style bell that directed motorists in the early 1900s along California's first north-south highway have been installed on poles shaped like shepherd's crooks along the Ventura and Hollywood freeways from Westlake Village to downtown Los Angeles.

Authorities say as many as 650 bells placed at two-mile intervals may eventually mark the storied footpath. Also known as the King's Highway, the route between San Diego and Sonoma was launched in 1769 by Father Junipero Serra.

A former Whittier resident's search for one of the old bells to use as a backyard garden decoration helped trigger the highway markers' renaissance.

Fifty-three-year-old mortgage broker John Kolstad lives in the Bay Area city of Saratoga. But he has never forgotten his curiosity over an original El Camino Real bell that stood near his childhood home.

"When I was young, I lived in Whittier near the corner of Whittier Boulevard and Colima Road. I'd always see this old bell on the corner surrounded by new buildings," Kolstad said. "I couldn't figure out why it was there, until one day in the fourth grade I went to the San Gabriel Mission and found one there."

He learned the story of Spanish padres traveling the pathway as they established a string of Catholic missions. By the time the last was built in 1823 in Sonoma, the route was wide enough for horses and wagons.

In 1904 the growing popularity of the automobile prompted resurrection of the idea of a "King's Highway" between San Diego and San Francisco. At a Camino Real Convention in Los Angeles, a coalition of civic groups decided to push for a state highway "along the route, as near as practicable, of the ancient Camino Real" between the missions.

There were no standardized highway signs at the time. So Mrs. Armitage C.E. Forbes, a coalition member, history buff and wife of a Los Angeles foundry owner, designed a mission-style bell to serve as a sturdy route marker.

Using her own molds and scrap iron from her husband's shop, she oversaw the casting of 85-pound bells inscribed with the words "El Camino Real" and the dates "1769 & 1906." The 15-foot posts with a crook at the top were equipped with signs showing the distance to the next town or mission.