Riverside Officials Vote to Close Skyline Drive, Cite Accidents, Vandals

County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to close Skyline Drive, a scenic dirt road that winds 4 1/2 miles through the northern Santa Ana Mountains from Corona to the Orange County line.

The closure will leave open only one public route from Riverside County into the Cleveland National Forest’s Trabuco District, a 161,633-acre reserve straddling the mountains from Santa Ana Canyon south to Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

“The only unrestricted access from Riverside County is Ortega Highway,” about 22 miles south of Corona, said Bill Pidanick, public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service.

To Install Locked Gate

Riverside County will continue to maintain Skyline Drive but will install a locked gate at the flat, eastern end of the road, just off Chase Drive in south Corona.

The county last installed a gate on Skyline Drive in 1978, after floods damaged the one-lane track. Vandals not only used the metal gateposts for target practice but also stole the gate.

This time, officials plan to use a vandalism-resistant “tank” gate, Road Commissioner LeRoy D. Smoot said. “I would hope that we can . . . have that gate in place in three or four months.”

People who live on or own land along Skyline Drive, companies with communications equipment atop nearby mountain peaks, the U.S. Forest Service “and perhaps some groups, four-wheel-drive clubs (or) the Sierra Club,” will have keys to the gate, Smoot said.

Deposit for Key

“The public will be able to obtain a key on some basis,” he said. “I haven’t worked out the details; there probably will be some kind of deposit.” By controlling access, Smoot hopes to discourage irresponsible use of both the road and the national forest.

The inconvenience of tracking down a key probably will discourage even responsible users, such as families looking for a scenic, isolated picnic site, said Ken Croker, the Sierra Club’s coordinator for Cleveland National Forest.

“We’re still concerned that an awful lot of the land up there belongs to the public, and foreclosing their access to it is not something we favor,” Croker said. “Whether it’s the four-wheelers or the equestrians or the hikers--no matter who it is--we think the forest is there for everybody.”

From Orange County, forest visitors can also use a rugged road through Silverado Canyon, off Santiago Canyon Road. Black Star Canyon Road, Orange County’s 11-mile continuation of Skyline Drive, is closed most of the year for fire and rainy seasons.

The landowners and residents scattered along Skyline Drive and Black Star Canyon Road are the apparent winners in the protracted debate over the roadway.

Longstanding Complaints

They favored closure as a solution to their longstanding complaints of rampant vandalism, indiscriminate trespassing, illegal shooting and inadequate law enforcement. But they did not want to be saddled with the road maintenance bill or the county’s liability problems.

Riverside County officials, including Supervisor Walt Abraham, cited a poor safety record and the potential liability for deaths and injuries as the primary factors in electing to close the tortuous road.

“From January, 1981, to October, 1985--56 months--there has been (on average) a road-related death every eight months and a moderate to severe injury every two months on Skyline Drive,” Smoot said in a report to the supervisors.

Six of the seven deaths occurred in 1981, and there has not been another fatal accident on Skyline Drive since 1982. Last year, 15 people were injured in six accidents on the road.

“The road itself is as safe as any dirt road in any mountains anywhere,” the Sierra Club’s Croker said.

But the county could be forced to pay the lion’s share of damages awarded in a lawsuit, even if it shares only a small fraction of responsibility for an accident or injury, under the “deep-pockets” doctrine of state law.

If the Legislature acts to lift that liability burden, proponents of unrestricted public access hope, Riverside County will be in a position to reopen Skyline Drive. “Maybe we can get it opened up again,” Pidanick said, “further down the road.”

MP, Los Angeles Times