Multiple signs note Colson Canyon Road’s closure: a big red one along Tepusquet Road a few miles from its intersection and at least three at the dirt road’s entrance.
“Colson Canyon Road closed to all traffic including foot traffic,” a green and yellow U.S. Forest Service sign states.
The road has been closed since January 2023, and its future is uncertain.
On Jan. 9 and 10 that year, a historic storm dropped more than 12 inches of rain in 24 hours in some areas of Santa Barbara County, causing the creek along Colson Canyon to wash away parts of the road and a large mudslide to cover a section of the road that runs through Los Padres National Forest.
While the residents who live along the first 2 to 3 miles of the road do have access to their homes, Santa Barbara County Public Works Department Director Chris Sneddon said more work is needed.
“The road got severely impacted and the Forest Service went in there and did an assessment and determined that it was going to be … economically extremely challenging to restore to full standards due to the extent of the damage,” Sneddon said. “So, they’ve restored it to the point that it’s passable but have told us that it’s going to be really challenging, if not infeasible, for them to restore the road permanently to the standards.”
Management of Colson Canyon Road falls to both Santa Barbara County and Los Padres National Forest. There’s a hard closure at the boundary from the county into the forest due to the mudslide, according to Santa Lucia District Ranger Benjamin Gray. Gray limited his comments on Colson Canyon to the portion of the road that runs through the national forest, but he added that the first 3 miles of the road from Tepusquet to the forest boundary “is completely passable.”
“It dead ends at the forest boundary, and there really isn’t a great turnaround spot,” Gray said. “So we’re trying to discourage people from going back there because there’s a locked gate.”
Fourth District Santa Barbara County Supervisor Bob Nelson said that while the road may be open to residents who live along it, Colson Canyon remains closed to the public. He added that the road needs more repair to be sustainable long term, maintenance-wise, adding that getting the road up to proper standards is the Forest Service’s responsibility.
Sneddon said the Forest Service is on the hook for maintaining the portion of Colson Canyon in the county, thanks to the terms of a 1985 agreement.
According to the cooperative agreement—included in the minutes from an Oct. 14, 1985, county Board of Supervisors meeting—“all maintenance will be the responsibility of the Forest Service” on Colson Canyon Road starting at Tepusquet Road.
Sneddon said that Colson Canyon Road isn’t part of the county’s maintained roads system because of the agreement, adding that “it’s in bad shape.”
“It will need some serious work,” he said.
Colson Canyon isn’t the only road included in a cooperative agreement between the two entities, some of which date back to the early 1900s, Sneddon said. Many were inked or amended in the 1970s and 1980s.
What makes Colson Canyon so unusual is that maintenance for the county-portion of a road falls to the Forest Service. As part of that cooperative agreement and others between the county and Forest Service, the county is responsible for maintaining several Forest Service Roads, including East Camino Cielo, West Camino Cielo, Stagecoach Road, Paradise Road, and Gibraltar Road.
Those roads were also impacted by the storms in 2023, and the county spent up to $10 million putting them back together afterward, including Gibraltar, Paradise, and Stagecoach.
“We’ve maintained those agreements,” Sneddon said. “For Gibraltar Road, we spent $5 million on that road alone. Gibraltar was the worst hit by those storms.”
The county has agreements for road maintenance with other contractors as well.
“To be honest, I haven’t had this kind of a situation, where we have an agreement to do the maintenance and someone says they can’t,” he said. “We’re kind of exploring how to proceed now.”
However, Sneddon added that he does understand where the Forest Service is coming from with resource constraints and how much it would take to bring Colson Canyon up to a maintainable standard.
Andrew Madsen, a spokesperson for Los Padres, told the Sun that its “agreements with Santa Barbara County have no bearing on the status of Colson, which is blocked by an enormous landslide within the forest boundary.”
The slide is approximately 4 acres, is unstable, and presents a public safety risk, according to Gray.
“If we were to bulldoze through it, … there’s a very good chance that the rest of it would come down,” Gray said. “We’re looking at alternatives to get access to that, but we don’t have anything finalized at this time.”
He understands that historically, it’s been an area for residents to access the forest and its recreational amenities, including campsites, off-roading trails, and hiking trails.
“It represents, certainly, a loss,” he said. “It’s going to take some time to figure out.”
Reach Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 13-23, 2025.
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