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 cold wet winds ever blowing,
And the shadowy hazel grove
Where mouse-grey waters are flowing,
Threaten the head that I love.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I swear to keep the dead upon my mind,/Disdain for all time to be overglad./Among spring flowers, under summer trees./By chilling autumn waters, in the frosts/Of supercilious winter—all my days/I’ll have as mentors those reproving ghosts.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“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)
“Concord’s little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)