The Cold Spring Canyon Arch Bridge in the Santa Ynez Mountains links Santa Barbara, California with Santa Ynez, California. The bridge is signed as part of State Route 154. The current bridge was completed and opened to traffic in 1963 and won awards for engineering, design and beauty. It is currently the 5th-longest span arch bridge of this "supported deck" type in the world. Seismic retrofitting was completed in 1998.
Cold Spring Tavern, originally a stagecoach stop, is approximately 600m south of the bridge's west base in the canyon below, on a stub of Old San Marcos Pass Road (now named Stagecoach Rd.) connecting with SR 154 at Camino Cielo and Paradise Roads.
The bridge causes concern in the Santa Barbara community as the site of dozens of suicides over the years; and barriers in the form of grid mesh fencing have recently been installed to prevent this.
Famous quotes containing the words cold, spring, canyon, arch and/or bridge:
“The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning’s fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning’s cold grey air;”
—James Thomson (1834–1882)
“See spring is gone,
ah wail, ah wail in vain,
for spring is dead.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“Thir dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than Arch Angel ruind, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I see four nuns
who sit like a bridge club,
their faces poked out
from under their habits,”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)