Four Blockades

Our little Briggs Road community has two access routes to the outside world. Our primary (at least until it was blocked) route is a mile or two long dirt road that crosses the Southern Pacific Railroad, runs on existing roads through Oasis Park, a (former) trailer park/campground, and crosses the Santa Clara River over a large culvert to meet Soledad Canyon Road. The back way is a five or six mile long torturous dirt road that ends at a locked gate at Agua Dulce Canyon Road. It is a miserable, jarring drive, very slippery in the rain, always rough.

In August 2004 the residents of Briggs Road headed home to find their passage through the defunct trailer park obstructed by men who threatened to shoot them. Los Angeles County sheriffs enforced the re-opening of the passage, but when the culvert washed out in a flood the new owners of the park took advantage of the opportunity to refuse to repair the river crossing.

Many months and tens of thousands of dollars later, the courts ruled in favor of the Briggs Road community and established an easement along the existing roads in the campground/park. But in the meantime California Fish and Game prohibited the replacement of the culvert, despite the existence of many other culverts in the area. Metrolink prohibited use of the paved at-grade crossing, and threatened handcuffs and jail to those who attempted to cross. And, the coup de grâce, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy bought the small property at the end of the back way in a secret deal. There is no other route in or out; the terrain is too rugged. Our eleven homes are legally landlocked.

Here is a hand-sketched map of our area. The blue line is the river. Briggs Road is the thin black wiggly line. Our properties are very approximately indicated with green patches. This

is all public information, and if you wish to see a map with better detail, you should have no trouble finding one online.

When you think about the judge’s ruling for an easement by necessity through Oasis Park, you realize that if any of the other obstructing entities were private, the courts would favor an easement and allow us legal access to our homes. Instead, we are powerless against agencies of the County of Los Angeles and the State of California.

In future posts this blog will fill in many astounding details about each of the four blockades mounted against our community—none with any believable justification. We will invite you to ask your own questions of the authorities, to see if you can do any better than we have to ferret out a reasonable explanation.

Our only hope is public opinion, expressed clearly and vociferously. Our only hope is for you to participate with a note or a phone call, just as we would do the same for you if you found yourself victims of a capricious predicament. Information on how to do that is coming soon. Meantime, please comment.

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