Atascadero (Spanish for "Mire") is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States, located on U.S. Route 101.

Atascadero is part of the San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses the extents of the county.

The nearby State Routes 41 and 46 provide access to the Pacific Coast and the Central Valley of California.

Edward Gardner Lewis, a magazine publisher from the East, founded Atascadero in 1913 as a utopian, planned colony.

Lewis employed the services of experts in agriculture, engineering and city planning to develop his dream colony for the anticipated 30,000 residents.

[11] Thousands of acres of orchards were planted, a water system was installed, and construction began on an 18 mi (29 km) road (now Highway 41 west) through the Santa Lucia Mountains to the ocean (Morro Bay), where Lewis built cottages and a beachfront hotel called the Cloisters.

The centerpiece of Lewis' planned community was an Italian Renaissance-style building, which was the home to Atascadero City Hall and the Museum until it was damaged in the 2003 earthquake.

Built between 1914 and 1918 with bricks made from local clay, this unique and beautiful building has become one of California's Historical Landmarks (No.

Founded in 1913 by Edward Gardner Lewis and incorporated in 1979, the Atascadero Colony as it was known at the time was originally envisioned as a model community.

[13] Little evidence of Atascadero's original architecture and urban design remain, as historic buildings and homes have been torn down to make way for more modern developments and the Sunken Gardens bisected by U.S. Route 101.

One of the few surviving examples of original urban design can be found, however, in the Rotunda Building located near the junior high school on Palma Avenue in the Sunken Gardens public park.

It was the headquarters for the Atascadero Colony, built of reinforced concrete and locally produced brick, it had also served as a private school for boys, a veteran's memorial building, and county offices.

The building housed the county library, Atascadero Historical Social Museum and then the city offices following incorporation in 1979.

The historic city hall is adorned with a 40-foot (12 m) dome atop the third story, originally intended to house the library.

Another example of Atascadero's early architecture is the Carlton Hotel, built in 1929, located just west of the Sunken Gardens on El Camino Real, the city's main commercial street.

This private home pioneered solar powered cooling and heating using an integrated rooftop water system.

This system can control heat exchange between interior and exterior environments by covering and uncovering the bladder between night and day.

Atascadero experiences a hot-summer Mediterranean (Köppen: Csa) climate, with a high degree of diurnal temperature variation.

Atascadero is serviced by one freeway and one highway: The Union Pacific Railroad Coast Line between Burbank (Los Angeles) and San Jose runs through Atascadero, carrying Amtrak's Coast Starlight passenger train through the city.

Amtrak Thruway 18 provides a daily connection to Visalia on the east, and Santa Maria on the west, with several stops in between.

In addition to fishing and swimming, the lake provides ample room for waterskiing, wakeboarding, jetskiing, and other water-related activities.

In August 2013, after ten years of closure, the original city hall building was reopened and remains in service.

In the 2017 Netflix series Godless, main character Roy Goode's older brother lives in Atascadero.