Media examine Coastside life without Devil’s Slide

The County Times and the Mercury News look at how the closure of the Devil’s Slide is affecting the Coastside.  The County Times in particular focus on the effect on tourist-oriented businesses.

This past weekend saw less than a tenth of the normal tourist traffic at Pillar Point Harbor, according to harbor district officials. That, in turn, has meant a 25 percent drop in business for nearby seafood restaurant Ketch Joanne. The restaurant also lost 50 percent of its business over Easter weekend.

Albert Dunnes family has owned Ketch Joanne for 35 years. They barely survived the five-month closure of Devils Slide in 1995. But now, for the first time, Dunne said his family is considering leaving the coast and taking the restaurant with them.

The Mercury News has a great quote from Caltrans,

"We go out there and we put our bulldozers on this massive mountain, and they look like Tonka trucks, and you realize that the mountain is a lot stronger than we are," Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss said. "In the end, the mountain will win and the slide will be in the sea."

Still, he said, engineers are confident they can fix the slide with new technology that uses a web of cables under the roadbed.