Quick Take
Capitola residents and pedestrians likely noticed that a significant portion of the Grand Avenue walking path on Depot Hill has been shut down to foot traffic due to a crumbling pathway. As many in Capitola know, it's far from the first time this path has seen issues.
Depot Hill in Capitola, hovering right over the village, is home to classic, stunning views of Monterey Bay, both on foot and from the houses that overlook the ocean. It’s just about the perfect place for a pedestrian path, allowing anyone who pleases to soak in the sun or feel the cool ocean breeze whenever they want.
So why is it currently blocked off to pedestrian access? Because it has a problem that plagues every ocean-facing part of the county: coastal erosion.
Earlier this month, a piece of pathway between Oakland Avenue and Saxon Avenue just on the other side of the wooden fence separating the path from the edge of the cliff did its best West Cliff Drive impression and crumbled into the sea about 80 feet below. The damage isn’t nearly as drastic as what you’ve likely seen along West Cliff Drive for more than two years now, but it was enough to prompt the city to close the path to foot traffic.
That’s something it’s used to doing, unfortunately.
“The Depot Hill bluffs have been subject to erosion for many, many years,” said Capitola City Manager Jamie Goldstein. “That was once a road that vehicles traveled on. It was closed off a long time ago, but continues to erode in episodic fashion.”
Goldstein said it wasn’t even that long ago that the city had to deal with the failure of a different portion of the same path. That section, just a block over between Oakland Avenue and Hollister Avenue, has been shut off to public access since 2018. He said the city studied different options for reopening that section, specifically relocating the path farther inland with about 10 feet of space available, but did not end up taking action.
“At that time, based on the geologists’ report, the [city] council didn’t think it was worth the amount of effort involved in relocating,” Goldstein said. “Moving the path to potentially buy maybe another year or two’s worth of access wasn’t a prudent investment of public resources.”
Goldstein said with the section between Oakland and Saxon, the city is going to go through a similar process and will work with geologists to evaluate the area and determine how to proceed. However, he said that the pathway could be only a memory come the not-too-distant future.
“I think absent some major project, that is the reality. Coastal erosion doesn’t go the other direction,” he said. “Without some major intervention, I do believe that the path has a limited lifespan.”
Gary Griggs, UC Santa Cruz professor of earth and planetary sciences, agrees, and notes that Depot Hill is “probably the most rapidly eroding section of cliff in Santa Cruz County.” He added that the buff has eroded about a foot each year over the past century.
“I’d say I’ve been down there 50 times over the years, and every time I go down there, there’s another new collapse,” he said.
Griggs said the constant erosion is due to a few reasons. First, stress from the elements creates fractures within the rocks that make up the bluff. He said that the fractures are discrete enough to make it look like solid rock, but actually, that solid rock has been broken up into weaker, layered slabs.
The orientation of the coastline in the area doesn’t do it any favors, either. “Waves move through there really quickly as soon as they hit New Brighton [State Beach], and the waves break almost parallel to the coast,” he said. “At Depot Hill, the waves hit the cliff at every high tide.”
Griggs also said that there is a section of weak clay stone along the base of the bluff that gets continuously undercut by those powerful waves, further weakening the entire cliffside. He said that while there are ways that construction crews can armor bluffs, such as by installing seawalls or rip rap, a shifting climate poses new challenges — ones that could be impossible to overcome. Rather than sea level rise, it’s harsh winters with extreme weather events that pose the biggest problem to the path’s — and Depot Hill’s — future.
“It’s those high waves and times of very high tides that we’ve experienced the last three winters in a row,” said Griffs. “This is going to go on forever. We can put on Band-Aids of different price tags and lifespans, but there’s absolutely nothing we can do in the long run to hold back the Pacific Ocean.”
While you might raise an eyebrow at that assertion, given the major rehabilitation work still ongoing on West Cliff Drive, Griggs said there are significant differences between the two locations. West Cliff is a public road with much higher usage than the Depot Hill walking path, which makes it a higher priority to preserve. And West Cliff is much lower — about 30 feet above the water as opposed to 80 or 90 feet high at Depot Hill. Depot Hill’s elevation leaves it more susceptible to erosion and destabilization.
Griggs also said that development along West Cliff Drive is farther away from the sites of erosion than on Depot Hill, which is something to keep an eye on in the future as erosion begins to make its way inland and threaten more structures.
“You know, after the path [on Depot Hill], it’s going to be the houses,” he said. “That’s going to be up to each individual property owner. I understand they want to live there as long as they can, but when you buy a home today, there’s no guarantee of a lifetime.”
Goldstein said that the tentative plans are to have the Capitola City Council consider voting on next steps on April 10, when he expects city staff to have options for the area. However, Griggs reiterated that the chances of reinforcing the trail in the long term are thin at best.
“It’s just a very tough place with geologically all the wrong conditions,” he said. “It’s nothing new, it’s just one of the worst spaces in the county.”
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