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 eyes of strangers
Are cold as snowdrops....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“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)
“Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet companion that is alike the lion and the dove; and prayer will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material world; she has taken possession of it; for, like the sun, she casts about it a sphere of light.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“I was at work that morning. Someone came riding like mad
Over the bridge and up the road—Farmer Rouf’s little lad.
Bareback he rode; he had no hat; he hardly stopped to say,
“Morgan’s men are coming, Frau, they’re galloping on this way.”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)