PASS IT ON

HOW ONE MAN DRIVING A PERFECT STRETCH OF ROAD IN A 1971 FORD PINTO CREATED A FAMILY LEGACY.

MY DAD GREW UP in rural Santa Ynez, California, two hours north of Los Angeles, a set of mountains between him and the coast. There was little for young Curtis Smith to do there aside from admire the faux-Danish architecture in neighboring Solvang. The outside world could only be reached via the road to Santa Barbara-a tire-scuffing sprint over the San Marcos Pass on Route 154. By the time I was born, my dad's affections had turned to sublime BMWs and robust Volvos, but he learned the Pass in his first car, a 1971 Ford Pinto.

Like many of California's great roads, the San Marcos Pass winds across a mountain range and connects very different worlds-farmland with a forest, a desert with the Pacific Ocean. It has turns that open past their apexes to reveal face-smacking beauty and switchbacks that are often clotted with belching semis. The San Marcos crests at 2250 feet and has widened and grown busier over the years, but in the late Seventies and early Eighties, it was perfect: a two-way proving ground that divided where Dad was from where he wanted to be.