---
title: "US 395 is one of California's most beautiful roads, and deadliest for its wildlife"
description: "U.S. Route 395 threads through the Eastern Sierra past some of California's most dramatic scenery. It also cuts across ancient deer migration routes, making it one of the state's deadliest highways for wildlife, and a growing focus of efforts to build crossings that let animals pass safely."
category: "California"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/california
author: "Lucía Fuentes"
published: 2026-07-15T17:04:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-15T17:04:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/us-395-is-one-of-california-s-most-beautiful-roads-and-deadliest-for-its-wildlif
tags: ["california", "wildlife", "eastern sierra", "caltrans", "conservation"]
---
# US 395 is one of California's most beautiful roads, and deadliest for its wildlife

U.S. Route 395 threads through the Eastern Sierra past some of California's most dramatic scenery. It also cuts across ancient deer migration routes, making it one of the state's deadliest highways for wildlife, and a growing focus of efforts to build crossings that let animals pass safely.

Drive U.S. 395 up the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada and the views do the talking: granite peaks, high desert, alpine lakes. For the mule deer that have crossed this ground for generations, though, the highway is not scenery. It is a hazard that kills hundreds of them, and endangers drivers, every few years.

## A deadly stretch

The danger is concentrated. Along one 15-mile section near Mammoth Lakes, Caltrans records [an average of roughly 57 wildlife-vehicle collisions a year, the great majority of them involving deer](https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-9/district-9-projects-list/mammoth-lakes-wildlife-crossing-project). Over a recent multi-year span, hundreds of deer were struck on 395 in Mono County alone. Each collision is a threat not only to the animal but to the people in the car: a full-grown deer, or a bear or mountain lion, can total a vehicle and injure or kill its occupants.

## Why here

The reason lies in geography older than the road. Several migratory deer herds in Mono and Inyo Counties move each year between high summer range in the mountains and lower winter range in the valleys, routes they have followed for millennia. U.S. 395 runs straight across those corridors. The deer do not reroute; they cross where they have always crossed, now into oncoming traffic.

## Building a way across

The fix that biologists favor is deceptively simple: give the animals a path over or under the road. Caltrans and conservation partners are advancing a project near Mammoth Lakes that would add [wildlife crossings, an overpass and an underpass, paired with fencing to funnel animals toward them](https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-9/district-9-projects-list/mammoth-lakes-wildlife-crossing-project). Studies of such structures elsewhere have found that crossings combined with fencing can cut collisions dramatically. The Mammoth Lakes effort has drawn planning funds and a coalition of partners, though the full build-out carries a price tag in the tens of millions and remains years from completion.

## Part of a bigger shift

California has increasingly embraced the idea that roads and wildlife can be reconnected. The most visible example is far to the south, where the [Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is rising over the 101 Freeway at Liberty Canyon](https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-7/district-7-projects/d7-101-annenberg-wildlife-crossing), west of Los Angeles, designed to let mountain lions and deer traverse one of the busiest freeways in the country. Billed as the largest wildlife crossing of its kind, it has helped turn a once-niche conservation concept into mainstream infrastructure.

Back on 395, the first overpass may still be some way off. But the shift in thinking has already happened: a highway long treated as an unavoidable death trap for wildlife is now seen as something that can be fixed, one crossing at a time, so that the animals, and the drivers who share the road with them, both stand a better chance.

## Sources

- [Mammoth Lakes wildlife crossing project](https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-9/district-9-projects-list/mammoth-lakes-wildlife-crossing-project)
- [US-101 Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon](https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-7/district-7-projects/d7-101-annenberg-wildlife-crossing)