Jacinto Reyes Scenic Byway (Route 33)

Heading north from Ojai on State Highway 33, the first named place is Wheeler Gorge. The road passes through three tunnels and a narrow canyon, running along the foot of sharp cliffs beside a boulder-strewn creek. Water seeps from the cliff faces, enough to keep maidenhair fern, mosses, and orchids growing on the rock. This is the lower end of the Jacinto Reyes Scenic Byway. The Forest Service describes it as a 38-mile segment of Highway 33 from the edge of the Ojai Valley to the junction of Lockwood Valley Road. Elsewhere on the same page it gives the length as 37 miles, from milepost 12 at the El Roblar Road intersection to about milepost 49 at the Ozena Fire Station.

The whole of it lies in Ventura County. Thirty miles of national forest border the road, along with 7 miles of private land inside the forest boundary. About three-quarters of a mile at the southern end lies outside the forest. The byway crosses the Ojai Ranger District and part of the Mt. Pinos Ranger District of the Los Padres National Forest, and the California Department of Transportation maintains the pavement. It carries two designations. The National Forest Scenic Byway covers the mileposts above. The State Scenic Highway begins at milepost 17.5, near Wheeler Hot Springs, and runs to the Santa Barbara County line at milepost 57.5. The Forest Service notes that potable water is not available.

Gorge, spring, and white rock

Above Wheeler Gorge the road comes to Bellyache Springs. Legend has it that the springs got the name because early travelers arrived so thirsty that they over-drank and got bellyaches. A Forest Service legend offers another version: early rangers met here on horseback to discuss Forest Service issues, or to belly-ache about them.

Farther on, the highway drops into the Sespe Creek watershed and the white sandstone outcroppings of Piedra Blanca come into view, with long views over the Sespe Wilderness. At Sespe Gorge, where the walls are vertical, rock climbers are often found bouldering and practicing rappelling. Then the road climbs to 5,020 feet on Pine Mountain Ridge, and the chaparral gives way to large old-growth Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine. From the byway the Pacific Ocean can be glimpsed to the south, and the Cuyama Badlands lie to the east. Recreation.gov names the Dry Lakes Ridge Botanical Area as a stop. It also lists interpretive signs along the way on natural resources, the history of the “urban forests,” the role of national forest watersheds, the history and culture of the Chumash, and the early settlers.

According to the Forest Service, most people come here to drive for pleasure, and the route is especially popular with motorcyclists, both riders alone and clubs. Others come to hike, camp, fish, photograph, climb, and play in water or snow. Cattle graze along the corridor, and scientists come for the geology. The road gives access to four congressionally designated wildernesses. The Forest Service puts the byway within a two-hour drive of 25 million people. It also says the route keeps its feeling of spacious solitude.

Three side roads off Highway 33

Most visits happen on three roads that branch from the highway. Matilija Canyon Road runs mainly through private land and the Matilija Environmental Science Area. It ends at a trailhead into the Matilija Wilderness, and day hikers and mountain bikers use it most.

Rose Valley Road, also called Sespe Road, gets the heaviest use on the corridor. It has two campgrounds, three small lakes, a shooting range operated under special use permit, several hiking trails, a trailhead into the Sespe Wilderness, and views of Piedra Blanca. Larger family groups camp here overnight and fish the Rose Valley Lakes, and it is the most heavily used horseback riding area along the byway.

Pine Mountain Road, also called Reyes Peak Road, sits at the highest point of the byway. It reaches three rustic campgrounds and three trails. One trail enters the Sespe Wilderness on its way to Reyes Peak, at 7,510 feet. From the road the views run north to the Cuyama Badlands and the Chumash Wilderness, and west, south, and east to the Dick Smith, Matilija, and Sespe Wildernesses. Hang gliders launch from here. Riders bring horses less often, because there is little room to park a horse trailer.

A cow camp at the head of the Cuyama

The Ozena Fire Station at the byway’s northern end shares its name with the Ozena Ranch. In 1854 Rafael Reyes drove 2,000 head of cattle and 1,000 head of horses into the Cuyama country in search of feed, and he made his cow camp at the head of the Cuyama, at what is now the Ozena Ranch. His nearest base of supplies was Ventura, thirty miles by trail over the San Rafael Mountains. The Forest Service credits the Reyes family with largely mapping the present highway route, to give their ranch on the Cuyama side of the mountains a way to the sea.

Rafael Reyes married sixteen years after he settled, and in 1871 his son Jacinto D. Reyes was born. After school Jacinto lived at the ranch and worked in the cattle business. William V. Mendenhall, writing when Jacinto had served thirty years, said he “learned the entire country from the cattleman’s viewpoint before the Forest Service was established.” In 1900 the forest reserves were still run by the Department of the Interior, and that year Jacinto went to work as a ranger for Supervisor Slosson. He held charge of the Cuyama district from then on. In the meantime the land around him changed hands and names. The Pine Mountain and Zaca Lake Forest Reserve was established in 1898. The Santa Barbara Forest Reserve followed in 1903 and became the Santa Barbara National Forest in 1907.

The ranger in blue flannel

Reyes told Mendenhall about the presidents. “In 1901,” he said, “President McKinley visited Ventura, and all of the rangers were called in.” Four years later the rangers were called in again: “In May, 1905, President Roosevelt visited Santa Barbara, and we were again called in. We escorted the President in the parade, and I had the privilege of riding on the right side of the President’s carriage.” He added: “We were in town amid the pomp and ceremony, but we did not have to wear evening clothes. The rangers appeared on all occasions in double-breasted blue flannel shirts and corduroy trousers.”

Men who later rose in the Forest Service came to the Cuyama district as cubs, among them W. B. Greeley, Will C. Barnes, A. W. Sampson, and P. T. Harris. Reyes told of one trip with Barnes. Leaving the Snedden Ranch with only six miles to go to the San Emigdio Ranch, Barnes feared they would arrive too early to be asked to dinner. He proposed a roundabout way so they would arrive just in time to get their names in the pot. Reyes also claimed that Greeley still owed him a pair of socks, from a bet on the amount of timber being scaled.

He fought practically all of the serious fires on the Santa Barbara forest in those years. These included the Matilija-Wheeler fire of 1917, which burned many houses in the Ojai Valley, the Tujunga fire of 1919, and the Kelley Canyon fire of 1922, each covering close to 100,000 acres. In 1921 he spent thirty-five consecutive days on the fire line, and in 1922 he spent thirty. At the time Mendenhall wrote, Reyes still used a pack mule he had owned since 1907. An Ojai Valley timeline records that Forest Ranger Jacinto Reyes retired in 1931, after 31 years in the Cuyama Ranger District.

Water on the Maricopa Highway

The same timeline gives 1933 as the year construction of the Maricopa Highway was completed. The Forest Service says the road was meant to be the great connection for commerce and tourism between the San Joaquin Valley and southern California. Recreation.gov describes it as the link between California’s Gold Coast and the arid interior of the Cuyama and San Joaquin Valleys. The forest it crosses became the Los Padres National Forest in 1936.

In January 1969 the Ojai Valley News counted over 30 inches of rain from two Pacific storms in the valley, with double and triple the valley’s one-day total in the mountains. Flooding damaged the Maricopa Highway across the Ventura River from the Ojala Resort, at the bridge leading to Matilija Hot Springs, and damaged Wheeler Springs along Highway 33. The newspaper reported that Friend’s Packing House, up on the Maricopa Highway, was torn apart and washed across the highway. What was left came to rest in the yard of Realtor Jack Gilbert, whose house was also totaled. Fifty years later, Bonnie Robinson Cage, seven at the time of the flood, recalled “the huge boulder that took out the packing plant, rolled it up like a piece of tin foil.”

The road took its present name later. The National Scenic Byway Foundation lists its designation as a Forest Service Byway in 1994. The Ojai Valley timeline gives 1995 as the year the Maricopa Highway was designated the Jacinto Reyes National Scenic Byway.