Calif. city built a quirky attraction and made a big mistake

Driving in Los Angeles County doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s confusing, congested and often dangerous, so when you hit a quarter-mile strip of road in Lancaster and a jaunty tune fills your car, it’s hard not to smile. The peppy, bygone “Lone Ranger” anthem is delightfully off-key, and yet, most people make a U-turn and enjoy the botched tourist attraction one more time. 

Lancaster’s musical road debuted in 2008 as part of a commercial spot for the Honda Civic, a quirky, emotionally appealing way to showcase the car. The plan was for it to live on as a Lancaster destination long after the ad went off the air. That is, until the neighbors started to complain. Meanwhile, observers began to notice something was wrong with the tune. To make matters worse, when the city rushed to appease residents and relocate the road, it didn’t make any attempt to fix the rendition of the “William Tell Overture.”

Here’s the original commercial:

A musical road is, in theory, a simple endeavor. Engineers carve grooves into the street at calculated intervals, much like the rumble strips that alert a driver with a loud grinding noise if they begin to veer off the road. Grooves set and spaced properly produce musical notes when a car drives at a certain speed over the route. The first musical road in the world was built as a public art project in Gylling, Denmark, in 1995, playing an arpeggio in F major. Other roads were later crafted in France, Indonesia, South Korea and China, but no country has more than Japan, which has a real affinity for the roads, touting at least 30 today — everything from Japanese folk songs to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

When Honda approached Lancaster city officials about paving something called a musical road, they figured, why not? The car company would do it for free, and the northern Los Angeles County city had always welcomed film production in the area, playing host to movies such as “Se7en” and “Kill Bill: Vol. 1.” The road would be the first of its kind in the United States, a moniker the city could publicize, and could be modeled after the other musical roads that had gained popularity internationally. 

It’s unclear who chose the original location on Avenue K between 60th Street West and 70th Street West in Lancaster, about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles, but the road bordered a residential neighborhood. It turned out that the strips of music-making concrete were incredibly loud, and neighbors began complaining almost immediately about hearing the song incessantly, often late into the night. Some estimated the sound carried up to a half mile away. “The neighborhood just went nuts,” Mark Hemstreet, executive director of Destination Lancaster, the city’s tourism arm, told SFGATE. “It was really cool for the first two weeks, and then it got really old really fast.” 

Hemstreet said the problem would accelerate on the weekends when hundreds of cars would drive the stretch at night, sometimes until 2 a.m. And they weren’t driving the stretch just once; they were making a U-turn and doing it multiple times.

“It was ridiculous. It kept me up half the night,” a nearby neighbor told the LA Times in 2008. 

Honda’s advertising agency told the paper it had crafted the concept to appeal to younger car buyers. “We had to prove it and do something iconic,” Laura Hausman of RPA advertising told the paper at the time.

After attracting people from across the country who came to experience the road, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris dreamed of many more musical roads in his city. He said he planned to court corporate sponsors that would pay to have their jingles play when drivers passed over a length of road, a new, unique revenue stream for the area. 

By the third week, though, the city relented and paved over the original grooves. It decided to re-create the road in another, more industrial area near the airport — for around $35,000 — with fewer residences within earshot.

Relocating the road could have been a blessing in disguise — an opportunity to adjust the grooves so a newly constructed stretch would sound in tune. But no, the new stretch of road on Avenue G between 30th Street West and 40th Street West was paved with the exact same measurements. 

The complaint that the road is simply out of tune isn’t correct, David Simmons-Duffin, a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech argues. It’s that the notes are wrong to begin with. The engineers didn’t take into account the total width of the spacing plus the groove, and with just the focus on the spacing of the grooves themselves, the song turned out slightly off. 

Simmons-Duffin wrote an incredibly in-depth, complex analysis of the road and everything that’s wrong with it on his website. It’s a fantastic read, and it suggests that Honda doctored the sound in its commercial to make at least part of the song in tune during the spot. The car giant didn’t respond to SFGATE’s request for comment by publication.

Either Honda edited the commercial to make the sound better — or the driver was speeding. Simmons-Duffin writes that Honda could have achieved the same melody while driving 67 mph, disregarding the 55 mph speed limit. He even goes so far as to ask his dad, a musicologist who loved to experiment with road sounds in the family car, to correct the tune in an audio clip.

This YouTube video also explains the issue well, using Simmons-Duffin’s analysis:

Seventeen years later, Simmons-Duffin told SFGATE he remembers seeing the commercial for the first time and instantly knowing something had gone wrong. He doesn’t remember how long it took to do his analysis, but it was a fun project to dig into, and he got a lot of positive feedback afterward. He’s even had inquiries since then from people and cities that want to build their own musical roads, asking for his advice.

Simmons-Duffin didn’t live in California when he wrote his analysis, so he didn’t get a chance to drive the road himself. He moved to the state in 2017, though, and lives just about an hour away, and he still hasn’t made the trip. “I really should,” he said with a laugh.

Regardless of its musical precision, the musical road is still a popular attraction for those taking a day trip to Lancaster. Hemstreet said he hasn’t looked at the visitor data in a long time, but he said they used to see hundreds of cars visiting on Saturdays and Sundays. He still fields plenty of questions from visitors about seeing the road, and the city goes out to clean the grooves every once in a while to upkeep the sound.

Musical roads have never caught on in the U.S. and are still a rarity. There are only two others outside California. A road in Tijeras, New Mexico, on Route 66 plays “America the Beautiful” and was created to encourage drivers to drive slower so they could hear the music, in a partnership between the National Geographic Channel and Nationwide Insurance. In Auburn, Alabama, a musical road plays part of the Auburn Tigers’ fight song, “War Eagle.”

Lancaster’s road isn’t the only one that had a rough reception. A Dutch road lasted only two days in 2018 since nearby residents described it as “psychological torture” to the New York Times. 

Just miles away from the Lancaster road, the neighboring city of Palmdale decided to create its own musical road in 2018, allowing visitors the ability to experience both roads in under 15 minutes. A stretch of road at R. Lee Ermey Avenue (Avenue N) on the eastbound side, between Amargosa Wash and Division Street, debuted in 2023 as a tribute to the late actor and Marine R. Lee “Gunny” Ermey on the Marines’ 248th birthday. “The Marines’ Hymn” “plays” on a much thinner rumble strip, an ode to the “Full Metal Jacket” actor who lived in town for 24 years. 

That location is along a stretch of undeveloped property, ending in a spot where aerospace enthusiasts often meet to watch Air Force planes take off and land. Drivers must deliberately align their tires and adjust their speed down to 45 mph (down from the 55 mph speed limit) for an optimal tune — or they could purposefully avoid it. 

The engineers from San Bar Construction who crafted the Palmdale road, as well as the New Mexico road, specialize in this type of groove work, ensuring the song sounds accurate. The project cost $100,000 and used American Rescue Plan Act funds. The city hasn’t tracked visitor numbers. 

California is slated to get its third musical road next year. Near Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow in Daggett, Calif., a stretch of road will also play “The Marines’ Hymn,” set to be the first of new musical roads installed in all eight states that span Route 66. 

Hemstreet said Lancaster is exploring the possibility of creating a third musical road in the area, this time with a tribute to the Air Force, possibly its hymn, since the Edwards Air Force Base is nearby. 

He said they’re still in the discussion phase and that the city, county and Caltrans — and nearby residents — would all need to get on board. Simmons-Duffin said they haven’t reached out to him, yet.