Go for an artsy joyride in Salinas, where three Highway 101 underpasses now boast new and refurbished murals.

Three Highway 101 underpasses in Salinas’ Alisal neighborhood now boast refreshed murals thanks to a project financed by the California Department of Transportation and the Clean California Program, with a little bit of help from the city.

“The existing murals were beaten up,” says Arsenio Baca, one of the members of La Neta Murals, a local muralist team that, last year, submitted a winning proposal to revive the mural at the underpass on Alisal Street. “It had graffiti on it.” La Neta’s hope was to make the whole mural complex cohesive. Baca says that one of the existing murals by Jesus Leon was full of ancient Mexican references. It contained an Aztec calendar that had been covered when someone threw a bucket of paint on it. “We brought it back to life,” Baca says.

On the other side of the street, there was – and is – a mural by Arturo Bolaños, a historical portrait of locals, Indigenous people and immigrants, battling hostile forces. “It’s very cool and the community seems to love it,” Baca says. “It was already very nice, but now the colors have come back.”

Their goal was to capture everything that is important to Salinas – farmworkers in the fields, the exchange of knowledge between the youth and the elderly, Mayan hieroglyphs, a local Esselen creation story that involves a coyote, a girl and a hummingbird. The crew also portrayed gods of agriculture and water, following their Latin-Mexican heritage.

“We wanted something big,” Baca says about the gigantic, proud faces they painted. “Something to draw people’s attention to.”

A budget of $100,000 was allocated for the Alisal Street underpass, where La Neta cleaned up the existing murals and made their own additions. Another $280,000 was designated for original work by Los Angeles muralist Timothy Robert Smith at Sanborn Road, and $300,000 for East Market Street, painted by the Santa Rosa couple Joshua and MJ Lawyer.

The La Neta crew – Sea Sevilla, Avelino Sanher, Gerardo Zambrano, Natalia Corazza and Baca – have been working together for three years now. They have a system of work, moving from outline to color filling to detail. Baca is particularly proud that despite the heavy sun and traffic, they managed to finish the project on time.

“We took care of business,” Baca reports, on behalf of La Neta. Now, they’re moving on to another big mural project in the Salinas Valley.