As a Ventura County Line resident for 28 years who almost exclusively shops in Camarillo and formerly worked there for 10 of those years, I can attest to the inconvenience of PCH’s closure between Yerba Buena and Las Posas roads. This current closure is certainly not the first or the last time this will happen — albeit the longest in memory.
Due to closures over the years, I was forced to backtrack on PCH to Kanan, to the 101 then on to Camarillo — about an hour each way with traffic. I have had my old trusty 1994 Volvo pounded in rockslides, tires blown out and my windshield broken from rocks falling down the nearly vertical slopes. In one instance, during an El Niño event and in my haste to get home from Camarillo, I ignored the road block at Las Posas, only to be turned around by the CHP warning of three ton boulders crashing down the mountain onto PCH.
When the engineers were planning PCH (the Roosevelt Highway) in 1919, they clearly did not envision the dangerous and unreliable road they were creating at our end, not to mention the potential destabilization of the mountain above. The legacy of the Springs Fire’s defoliation has delivered the final blow.
Anyone who chooses to live in our end of Malibu must accept, along with the overwhelming beauty we enjoy, the isolation and the ongoing unreliability and dangerous nature of this crucial passageway.
Pamela Campbell