With more visitors than Yosemite, Big Sur is overwhelmed

For the past three years, the narrative around Big Sur was that it was a world unto itself. With the southern part of the highway completely closed for repair after several major landslides, the crowds ebbed, nature got a break, and the hum of daily life in the forest returned to a more peaceful rhythm. 

At the same time, the region - which relies on visitors - also struggled in moments of isolation. 

Then, in January, the road reopened. Now, a little more than six months after Highway 1 went from "America's most beautiful cul-de-sac" to a major thoroughfare once more, folks have descended on Big Sur this summer en masse. 

And while an official tally of visitors may not be available until sometime next year, it's clear that weekends in particular are seeing much more than the average number of visitors. 

In his 35 years living here, longtime Big Sur resident Marcus Foster said he's hard-pressed to remember a time that it's been this busy. "It's to the point where people don't want to leave their house on the weekends," he said of the locals' experience here. "Businesses are actually losing employees because they're fed up with their commutes. More than half the employees who work here commute, sometimes from long distances: Seaside, Monterey, Salinas. I have one friend who works in Ventana. It takes him over two hours to get to work."

But it's more than just commuter and visitor traffic, Foster said. It's car and van campers. It's trash everywhere. It's people stopping in the middle of the highway - especially the viral, must-get-a-selfie spots like Bixby Bridge. 

It's a trio of ongoing smaller-scale roadwork and bridge fortification projects from Caltrans. It's folks illegally camping, who are sparking up illegal campfires. It's lines of cars alongside the highway jutting into the lands near popular pullout spots and restaurants. It's pedestrian traffic. Everything, combined with a lack of resources to help mitigate it all, has turned the summer of 2026 in Big Sur into something Foster, along with many residents here, can't quite fathom. 

"It's a big story, everyone's talking about it," said Foster, who is co-founder and chairman of Keep Big Sur Wild, a conservation nonprofit tasked with helping to adhere to the Big Sur Land Use Plan. The plan is the seminal document from the 1980s that has helped guide the massive and massively popular coastal region's recreation and development policies for more than 40 years.

Even at the time of its publication in 1985, the land use plan predicted that Big Sur could eventually be overwhelmed: "It is expected that Highway 1 cannot accommodate anticipated demands by traffic during peak use periods if recreational use continues to increase along current patterns," the document states. 

"What are the answers? And how can we better manage [Big Sur]?" Foster asked. "We always have money to market and push for increased tourism. There seems to be a lot of money for that, but there seems to be not be a ton of money or resources for better management for visitation."

Foster pointed out that Big Sur sees more visitors than Yosemite, which gets about 4 million visitors a year. Yosemite also has more support: Even in a time when the government has severely kneecapped operations, it has about 758 National Park Service employees in the summer and 506 in the winter, according to 2024 NPS statistics, the most recent available. Seasonal hospitality employees swell to 1,271 in the summer and 619 in the winter.

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But the picture in Big Sur is very different. Beyond a handful of California State Parks employees who serve as rangers or lifeguards, there's not even a single resident sheriff dedicated to patrolling Big Sur, Foster said. 

"We've been without one a couple years now," he explained, noting that staffing the region is tough, yet there always seems to be tax money to fund See Monterey, the county's marketing arm to attract visitors. "We have millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund a marketing agency, but not funding for a resident sheriff for one of the highest-traveled destinations in the world. We get more visitation than Yosemite annually. We basically have few state park rangers and the CHP to cover the 5 to 6 million people that are coming here ... seems like there's better ways money could be spent."

The visitor statistics are overwhelming. "According to Visit California, visitation has surged significantly since the roadway reopened on Jan. 15. Northbound traffic at Ragged Point has grown more than 900% year-over-year-clear evidence of restored access and pent-up demand for travel to this iconic coastal corridor," a May 15 Caltrans news release on the uptick in tourism said. 

"California's nation-leading economy is strongest when our communities are connected, and the reopening of Highway 1 is already generating meaningful economic benefits up and down the Central Coast," Dee Dee Myers, a senior adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a statement. "From hotels and restaurants to small retailers and tourism operators, businesses are once again welcoming visitors from around the world."

But the push to keep pushing people to go to Big Sur has hit a breaking point for some. "Stop marketing Big Sur and start managing it! See Monterey, Visit California and social media influencers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg!" Keep Big Sur Wild wrote on Facebook in June. "We recognize that tourism is vital to our local economy but we need to find a better balance and carrying capacity that our roadways and infrastructure were designed to accommodate, not just in Big Sur but the Monterey Peninsula as well."

This isn't the only time that See Monterey has come under scrutiny over the past month from places that are seeing a marked increase in visitors. In June, the Carmel City Council decided to temporarily remove funding for the marketing agency from its annual budget, questioning whether it even needs the marketing at this point. "We've received a lot, and I would say we've received as much comment this year on marketing money as I have in all of my previous years," councilmember Jeff Baron said at the June 2 meeting. "And I don't think that's something to be taken lightly."

Kirk Gafill, who owns the heavily trafficked destination restaurant Nepenthe and is president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, said he recognizes that there has been a noticeable shift in people returning to the area since the Highway 1 reopening. 

"I think there's no question that whether you're a resident or a commuting employee or a visitor, there are times, now that the highway has reopened, there are delays," he told SFGATE. "How [you] are sharing the road with a number of people."

While Gafill doesn't believe the crowds have gotten to the point where they're out of control, nor is the region unnavigable, he admitted that on weekends, the area does get impacted. 

Like Foster, he noted a number of factors go into the crowding and congestion, including the Caltrans projects that have caused traffic slowdowns along the highway. He said residents and employees are impacted most by the work, noting it "really added insult to injury during peak periods" of traffic.

Three separate projects are currently taking place in the region, Caltrans confirmed to SFGATE on Tuesday: construction of a retaining wall about a mile south of the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, emergency repair of an embankment just north of the Point Sur Lighthouse, and a project to help stop the corrosion of Rocky Creek Bridge about three quarters of a mile north of Bixby Bridge.

"All three of the above projects have temporary signals in place which operate 24/7," Caltrans spokesperson Kevin Drabinski wrote SFGATE Tuesday. "... Travel delays are indeed associated with the signals at these projects. However, these delays are playing out against unprecedented travel volumes on Highway 1 this summer."

Beyond the seemingly never-ending slate of road work, Nepenthe's Gafill noted that additional enforcement efforts, like the county's recent parking ban at the pullout near Bixby Bridge, is helping, and additional funding for more traffic enforcement projects seems to be working its way through the county. But for now, he acknowledges that "weekends and holiday periods, anyone could be frustrated" traveling through Big Sur. 

"There is a lot of work and effort going into addressing [the issues], but the wheels of change move slowly," he said. 

Overall, however, he maintains that Highway 1 being open all the way through has been a benefit and has revitalized the area wholesale. "A lot of our guests, they're not complaining when they get in the door," Gafill said. "They're just happy to be in Big Sur. Happy with the experience."

For his part, Keep Big Sur Wild's Foster says he too believes there's a middle ground to be found. People should be able to travel to Big Sur and enjoy what it has to offer. And he is happy that the region is receiving the attention it deserves. 

"We're not anti-tourist. We just want to make it a better experience for the visitor and for the residents that live in this area, that feel like we're losing the quality of life due to overtourism and the traffic it creates," he concluded. "We're focused on keeping Big Sur one of the most unique places for people to experience in the world. And if we continue on this path, we're going to lose everything that makes Big Sur unique." 

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