It doesn’t take a hawk eye to recognize that the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills is not your normal Caltrans project.
For one thing, there’s the color. Most Caltrans structures are the light gray of natural concrete. But to reduce reflectivity and help the crossing blend in more with the surrounding land, the new crossing’s 27 million pounds of concrete have been colored a shade dubbed “dusty mocha” by the project’s lead designer, Robert Rock, a landscape architect for Chicago-based Living Habitats.
The official name, however, is Federal Standard Color 595-33105, a hue “inspired,” Rock said, by the soil around the crossing that will eventually provide wildlife safe passage between the Santa Monica Mountains to the south and the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the north when the project is completed…