Exit 161: Santa Barbara County, CA

Its mystery is incomprehensible.

Okay, this has kind of bugged me for years. As you may know by now, I make somewhat frequent trips up and down the 101 freeway between Los Angeles and Northern California. I may go up and down the road about a half a dozen times per year, in fact. Along the way, I drive through some of the most beautiful and diverse land there is in the state. However, every time I pass Exit 161, I just have to ask myself: What The Hell Is This???

I mean, looking at the picture, it seems normal enough: it’s a freeway offramp, there are some hills around, maybe a few shrubs, nothing too spectacular. The issue that I have with Exit 161? It has no name. It’s just Exit 161.

Exit 12A off the 101 in Universal City is Lankershim Boulevard, an exit I used to take daily on my way to work. Exit 283 in King City is Jolon Road, which I’ve written about before. Exit 456 is Lucas Valley Road, which leads you to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. Exit 161 has no name, and it leads you nowhere.

Exit 161 is located on the very northern edge of the Santa Ynez valley in Santa Barbara County, which is one of the more impressive looking places you can imagine. It’s in the middle of Santa Barbara wine country (or as the Chumash Casino billboards will have you believe, Santa Barbara Win Country), somewhere south of the tri-tip and north of the split pea soup.

If you go under the freeway to the other side, you find… the other side of the freeway, and a dirt road that leads up into the hills. Google Maps won’t help you out here, the dirt road literally leads you… nowhere. Seriously, if you blink at the right moment while driving up the freeway, you’ll miss the exit and not even know it.

I let my curiosity get the better of me last weekend while driving back to L.A., and took the mysterious Exit 161. I feel like a more complete person for having done so, yet only slightly less off-put by the nameless exit. I still don’t know what it is, where it should lead, or why it is even there. Somebody could have had the decency to at least make up a name for the exit. They didn’t even have to be creative about it – the Cat Canyon Road turnoff is only a few miles to the south.

Regardless, Exit 161 remains. Defiant. Independent. Nameless.