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:
“Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you ... feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)
“An arch never sleeps.”
—East Indian saying.
“I see four nuns
who sit like a bridge club,
their faces poked out
from under their habits,”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)