SLO County town’s iconic sign damaged by storms. Can it be saved?
Cambria’s historic “Welcome Traveler” sign, which faces the northbound lane of Highway 1 from the edge of the East Ranch meadow of Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, has taken a beating during recent storms.
Mel McColloch, longtime president of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce, is riding to the rescue again, as he has in prior years when the iconic wooden sign was damaged.
He told The Cambrian Dec. 19 that he was working to get permission to make the repairs, as he had done in 2016. The sign has been “my favorite pride and joy since 1975, when I first started coming over here, and I’m bound and determined not to let it go down.”
That same day, Mark Garman had posted on several social media platforms about his concerns for the “meadow sign.”
“It is sad to see this vintage sign in this dilapidated condition,” he wrote. “This sign to us, as well as many others I’m sure, has been viewed and enjoyed for decades” by those visiting Cambria. “... What do folks think? Does anyone else enjoy this roughly 50-year-old piece of local history and want to help it survive for others to enjoy?”
McColloch was already on the case.
By Dec. 23, he confirmed that he had gotten written permission to “get it done” from Carlos Mendoza, facilities and resources manager for the Cambria Community Services District, which owns the ranch on behalf of townspeople. The Chamber president said he also had verbal encouragement from a member of the Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve board of directors.
Contractor Roberto Garcia observed the sign during the recent storms, McColloch said, and now that the weather has calmed down and the meadow is drying out, he’ll look to present a bid to do the repairs.
McColloch may try to get a grant from the Cambria Tourism Board toward paying for the repairs.
As Steve Provost, former editor of The Cambrian, wrote in 2016 after the sign’s last beauty treatment, “The three-posted wooden sign, its letters punctuated with the forms of half a dozen sea birds, seemed iconic the first time I saw it, and indeed, it’s been there a long time.
“No one seems to know exactly how long,” he continued.
Consuelo Macedo of the Cambria Historical Society, told Provost that the sign wouldn’t have been there before the mid-1960s, when the highway bypass replaced the old State Route 1 alignment along Main Street through town.
She said the signs probably went in “after 1965” as a means of directing tourists back toward the town and its businesses, which are partially obscured by the pine forest.
