Big Sur is located along Scenic Highway One approximately 150 miles south of San Francisco and 300 miles north of Los Angeles. Historically, the name Big Sur, was derived from that unexplored and un-mapped wilderness area which lays along the coast south of Monterey. It was simply called El Sur Grande, The Big South.

The record maximum temperature was 102 °F (38.9 °C) on June 20, 2008, and the record low was 27 °F (−2.8 °C), recorded on December 21, 1998, and January 13, 2007.

The month with the greatest rain fall total was January 1995 it rained a record 26.47 inches (672 mm). At Pfeiffer–Big Sur State Park on the coast, rainfall averaged about 43 in. (109 cm) annually from 1914 to 1987. In 1975–1976, it rained only 15 in. (39 cm) at the park, compared to 85 in. (216 cm) in 1982–1983.

The Bixby Bridge in Big Sur was built by prisoners eager to earn "good time" off their prison sentences. It is one of the world's highest single-span bridges at 714 feet long by 260 feet high.

The rare Santa Lucia fir is found only in the Santa Lucia mountains. A common "foreign" species is the Monterey pine, which was uncommon in Big Sur until the late nineteenth century, though its major native habitat is only a few miles upwind on the Monterey Peninsula, when many homeowners began to plant the quick-growing tree as a windbreak. There are many broadleaved trees as well, such as the tanoak, coast live oak, and California bay laurel. In the rain shadow, the forests disappear, and the vegetation becomes open oak woodland, then transitions into the more familiar fire-tolerant California chaparral scrub.

The Big Sur River watershed provides habitat for mountain lion, deer, fox, coyotes and non-native wild boars. The boars, of Russian stock, were introduced in the 1920s by George Gordon Moore, the owner of Rancho San Carlos. Because most of the upper reaches of the Big Sur River watershed are within the Los Padres National Forest and the Ventana Wilderness, much of the river is in pristine condition.

"California Saga: California" (1973), a single on The Beach Boys' album Holland, depicts the rugged wilderness in the area and the culture of its inhabitants.

Apple's desktop operating system, macOS Big Sur, announced on June 22, 2020, during WWDC, is named after this region.

The area, now popular with tourists and naturalists, was once a wilderness dotted with cattle ranches and small farms; electricity did not reach it until the mid-1950s. The splendor of its scenery and the loneliness of its 19th-century homesteaders have been interpreted by Robinson Jeffers in poems such as Women at Point Sur (1927). The poet’s home (which he built of local rock and stone) is one of the Big Sur’s landmarks. Many other writers, among them Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, lived in the region and celebrated it in their work. In the mid-1980s a comprehensive zoning plan was adopted by Monterey County authorities that strictly limited commercial development along a 68-mile (109-km) stretch of Big Sur’s twisting and mountainous shoreline.