The endless battle to save America's greatest road from its own demons Highway 1 is one of America's most beautiful – and most troublesome – roads Credit: Getty One of the problems with beauty is that it can appear effortless. It can look as if it were conjured with a singular flick of a magic wand, or in a lone moment of divine inspiration – when, in fact, perfection tends to be the fruit of a process that is long-winded, torturous and deeply impractical. And those epic end results? Welcome to years of maintenance, painstaking restoration, and fears that the glory of it all cannot be preserved in perpetuity.