Katie Rodriguez here, thinking about the “new normal” many of us are continuously getting acclimated to. The housing crisis is one part of that reality, which continues to squeeze people out of communities, especially along the California coastline. At the same time, our changing climate is redefining what it means to live along the coast (and beyond).
Big Sur is a unique study in this. The reason we all adore this area is that the region feels generally untouched relative to the rest of the state. Yet the very same reasons people are drawn to it also make it a notoriously difficult place to create more housing, and leave it vulnerable to environmental disasters.
As more people flock to the area hoping to get a piece of it, the strain on an already stretched region grows. Big Sur struggles to provide housing for the people that live there, but also, of course, for the very workers who sustain its booming tourism industry.
My cover story, published in this week’s issue of the Weekly, explores how forces are colliding in Big Sur—housing shortages, environmental changes and tourism. But it also looks at how local officials are working to manage the one factor they can most immediately influence: tourism.
I began reporting this story a month before Car Week, back in July. Then, the concerns from the locals had been loud and clear: the traffic mounting after the opening of Highway 1 had been so egregious, that people couldn’t get to work, emergency responders were slowed, and people who lived in Big Sur were budgeting a four-hour round trip to go to town for supplies.
That frustration led to local action. The County enacted a parking moratorium and successfully installed traffic cones and patrol officers to prevent people from stopping at the famous Bixby Bridge.
Curious to see how tourists were responding to the new selfie blockade, I drove down to Big Sur on what turned out to be day one of the Timber Fire.
Inevitably, my plans for this story changed and were delayed thanks to the Timber Fire, followed by the Plaskett Fire, which burned to the south just a few weeks later. Although the official causes of the fires have not yet been released, both are widely believed locally to have been human-caused. The Timber Fire, in particular, had been discussed at a Big Sur Multi-Agency Advisory Council meeting, where it was reported to have started when a minor visiting the area made an illegal campfire.
“This place seems like it’s got the best of all worlds,” Alex Hernandez, visiting from Las Vegas with his family for the first time, told me on the back lawn of the Big Sur River Inn. As we were talking, water tenders were flying loudly overhead to deliver water to firefighters. “One thing that caught my attention was the bridge. All it takes is literally one click of something and then it becomes part of your algorithm on social media, and then you get flooded with ideas like this.”
You can check out the cover story here.