A storm-battered span that connects Northern California to Big Sur is being demolished this week, leaving the Bay Area without a straight shot to one of the most beloved places on California’s central coast — for months, perhaps a year.
As a 6,000-pound wrecking ball started to destroy the sinking Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Monday, the isolated Big Sur community urged Caltrans to consider a temporary bridge across the steep canyon.
Big Sur is highly dependent on tourism — and an estimated two-thirds of these tourists come from towns north of the collapsed bridge, such as Carmel, Monterey, Santa Cruz and the Bay Area.
Almost all of Big Sur’s fresh produce, meat, construction materials and other critical supplies also come from the north. Almost all of its workers — the people who help feed, clean and maintain popular retreats such as Nepenthe Restaurant, Ventana Inn, Post Ranch Inn, Deetjen’s Inn and the Esalen Institute — live in the north.
The community even depends on the bridge to haul its garbage north, to Salinas.
“There needs to be single lane vehicular bridge to restore anything like a normal social and economic experience for the Central Coast … but that may simply not be possible,” said Big Sur Chamber of Commerce president Kirk Gafill, whose family built and has managed Nepenthe for three generations.
“It is a regional issue,” he said. “With this access shut down, it will really change travel patterns and decisions made to come to coastal California.”
Two of the three piers that support the 1960s-era bridge cracked after heavy rains.
“It was something no one ever thought about,” said Jon Knight, fire captain with the Big Sur Volunteer Fire Brigade, who lives south of the bridge. “We were afraid of the road slipping out. We were afraid of the mountain sliding. We never thought we’d lose the bridge.”
The new design will be a single strand, without piers, and will be less vulnerable to erosion in the canyon below.
Even the powerful crane, as wide as two lanes of traffic with a 305-foot boom, was unable to drop the wrecking ball with the necessary force on Monday, said Susana Cruz, a spokeswoman for Caltrans. New parts have been ordered, and another attempt will be made later this week.
Caltrans officials say it could be nine months to a year before a replacement is completed.
The demolition and new construction is tricky, due to electrical lines and the bridge’s location in a pristine and protected landscape, said Cruz.
“The wrecking ball has vertical drops — it’s not swinging,” she said. “There are power lines, and we don’t want bridge parts to go in all different directions.”
The bridge’s concrete and rebar will fall directly into the canyon and then be hauled away to recycling or salvaged for later use, she said.
A temporary bridge could get in the way of construction for the permanent replacement, she said. She added that a temporary bridge also could divert time and attention away from the permanent project, delaying it.
“We haven’t discarded the idea, but our first priority is the permanent bridge,” she said, adding that a temporary bridge for pedestrians would be more feasible than a bridge for cars.
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For now, the only link between south and north Big Sur is a half-mile foot trail, still under construction, through Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park.
The trail — for locals only — climbs 600 feet in elevation, is bounded by poison oak and full of steep switchbacks. It’s not practical for night travel, young children, the elderly or workers weary after a long shift.
“It is not open to the public for the foreseeable future,” said Martha Karstens, chief of the Big Sur Volunteer Fire Brigade, whose firefighting team is now divided by the bridge closure. Her all-volunteer rescue team fears accidents, injuries or missing hikers on the trail.
State parks officials also want to avoid the arduous trail from becoming a major public thoroughfare, damaging the fragile forest environment, said Brent Marshall, the Monterey district’s superintendent.
“We are building something we don’t normally do, in a place we wouldn’t normally put it, but we’re trying to be a good partner,” fast-tracking a project that normally takes two to three years to complete, he said.
On Monday, isolated schoolchildren and parents gathered at a yurt on Post Ranch to meet a teacher from the Carmel school district — and plan for months of long-distance learning.
Meanwhile, limited access opened for locals from the south, using Highway 1 from the small town of Cambria. One lane of traffic has opened along a stretch of the road near Mud Creek and a second stretch of road south of the town of Gorda, at the Ragged Point Inn. That’s a long and dangerous drive.
“We’re down to bare bones — maintenance and security. There are no other options,” said Gafill, who sent his wife and son north to complete high school. “We can’t lock down and walk away.”
“Communications are limited to what you can do on the phone or computer,” he said. “If you want to hug your kid or kiss your wife or if you want to get supplies or you want to get mail … you can’t do that now.”
