Scenic Road Key to Saving Hills : Growth: Land conservancy group pushes crowded Carbon Canyon Road for special designation

Carbon Canyon Road meanders through some of the most beautiful scenery in Orange County--lush, oak-filled canyons, open meadows and year-round mountain streams.

Yet, bucolic as it is, this seven-mile stretch of rural beauty has not been designated a scenic highway, as have parts of Ortega Highway and the Angeles Crest Highway in Los Angeles County.

Now an environmental group calling itself the Chino Hills Land Conservancy is trying to change all that, working with a Pomona legislator to have the road placed on the state scenic highway list.

The effort is more than a simple attempt to have blue scenic highway markers placed on the road. David Miller, the group’s president, said the surrounding Chino Hills are threatened by development and that designating Carbon Canyon Road as a scenic highway would help preserve the area.

The hills, with crests ranging from 1,300 feet to 1,800 feet, form a natural barrier between the mild coastal plains of Orange County and the arid, warm inland valleys. And they serve as a haven to deer, mountain lions, coyotes and other forms of animal and plant life.

“The whole future of the hills is at stake,” Miller said.

A scenic highway designation helps protect a road from junkyards, billboards, high-rise buildings and anything else that could detract from the surrounding scenery, said Laura Johnson, scenic highway coordinator for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).

To have the highway designated as scenic, Johnson said, local governing bodies must first pass ordinances to restrict development and force developers to use building materials that blend into the local scenery and preserve existing streams and creeks.

“You try to keep the corridor looking as attractive as possible,” Johnson said.

Members of the Chino Hills Land Conservancy, a nonprofit group with about 25 members, sent a letter to Assemblyman Charles W. Bader (R-Pomona) last month asking him to sponsor legislation that would make the road eligible for the scenic highways list.

Bader said he was willing to meet with conservancy members to discuss their request but added that his main concern is doing something to relieve the traffic congestion in the Chino Hills, where Carbon Canyon Road is the only thoroughfare.

“The transportation problems there are atrocious,” Bader said. “The traffic (on Carbon Canyon Road) is backed up for miles. It is clear that the planning has been inadequate for the number of houses built in that area.”

Once a road is deemed eligible for scenic highway status--and it can be done only through state legislation--local governing bodies must then pass the protective ordinances. With that done, a final decision on the matter is left in the hands of Caltrans’ Departmental Transportation Advisory Committee. The entire process can take months to complete.

Beginning at Lambert Road in Brea, Carbon Canyon Road winds past a patch of working oil wells before entering a landscape so rural and pristine that it could have been etched on canvas. Carbon Canyon Regional Park, with its small lake, is located off to one side of the road while horses and cattle graze on the other.

The road follows Carbon Canyon Creek, which runs year-round from springs and ground water, through steep canyons. Waist-high mustard plants dot the hillsides, and mule deer can occasionally be seen in the area. The canyon is filled with stands of California live oak and walnut trees. Turkey vultures soar in quest of prey.

At the San Bernardino County line, the road enters the quaint community of Sleepy Hollow, a 1920s-era village once inhabited by Prohibition bootleggers. It is here that Miller and several other Chino Hills conservancy members live.

After leaving Sleepy Hollow, the road takes a breathtaking “S” curve as it begins to descend into Chino, with its development pushing into the Chino Hills. Although the view is still scenic, new housing developments abound and a more suburban atmosphere prevails. The road ends at Chino Hills Parkway.

The encroachment of development is what prompted Miller and his group to try and preserve the road.

Under San Bernardino County’s Chino Hills specific plan, 25,000 housing units are planned for the eastern side of the hills. Riverside County is also pushing in from the east, while the city of Diamond Bar is building up from the west in Los Angeles County. In Orange County, Yorba Linda is crawling up one side of the hills, while Brea city officials--whose sphere of influence extends all the way to the San Bernardino County line--are studying a plan to develop toward Carbon Canyon.

And, with the explosive growth of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, new roads are being contemplated for the hills. Public agencies on both sides of the hills have been struggling with ways to relieve traffic congestion from the Riverside Freeway and Carbon Canyon Road--the two main routes between Orange County and the Inland Empire.

Between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, the road is one long parking lot.

The only alternative to the congestion is to carve another highway through the Chino Hills, Bader, environmentalists and county planners agree.

Although there has been some talk of widening Carbon Canyon Road, that has not been seriously considered because of the logistic and political problems in widening through places such as Sleepy Hollow, where homes nestle alongside the roadway, said Robert Peterson, manager of transportation planning for Orange County.

“We would be virtually destroyed by a widening of the highway,” said Ron Nadeau, a Sleepy Hollow resident who is vice president of the Chino Hills conservancy.

Instead, planners from Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties are considering three other routes through the Chino Hills. The most controversial calls for a six-lane highway to run through Soquel Canyon south of Carbon Canyon Road.

Claire Schlotterbeck, head of a group called Hills for Everyone, said the highway would cut through a part of the 10,000-acre Chino Hills State Park, which her group fought to have opened in 1986.

Another new road would run through Tonner Canyon north of Carbon Canyon Road, cutting through a portion of the Firestone Boy Scout Reservation in Orange and Los Angeles counties. Boy Scout officials have expressed dismay with the proposal.

Schlotterbeck’s option--and one being considered by county planners--is for a road to run along the ridge of Tonner Canyon. She said her group wants to make sure the Chino Hills remain a wildlife haven.

“We call this our treasure island in a sea of urbanization,” Schlotterbeck said. “Once you’re in there, you don’t know there are people on the outside.”

While the three routes are being studied, residents hope that preserving Carbon Canyon Road will be only the first step toward protecting other areas.

“The whole reason for preserving Carbon Canyon Road,” Miller said as he hiked through the lushly carpeted canyon bottom this past week, “is to preserve the scenery out here.”