Shoshone roads in for major upgrades

Interstate 90 isn’t the only roadway in Shoshone County that will be under the knife this spring with several projects in full swing.

Crews have been especially busy on Country Club Road in Big Creek, where a full bridge replacement project is underway. 

These projects are funded entirely by the state.

Shoshone County Public Works Director Jessica Stutzke has been up to her eyeballs in work with the warmer weather effectively jumpstarting several projects — but she’s excited to see improvements to the county’s roads at no cost to the county. 

“We will have another Leading Idaho Local Bridge replacement on Silver Valley Road at Moon Gulch,” Stutzke said.

That project is expected to begin in mid-June and take two months to complete.

The county will also be repaving over a mile of Silver Valley Road from Big Creek headed west toward Kellogg. 

It was funded through a grant from Idaho’s Strategic Initiatives Local Transportation Grant Program, which gave the county $990,000. 

Stutzke plans to put that one out for bid in the coming weeks, but with the understanding that it will require coordination with the timing and scheduling of the work at Moon Gulch, including any detouring that may come from the ongoing work on I-90. 

Moving north to the North Fork region of the Coeur d’Alene River, improvements will be completed on what is Shoshone County’s busiest roadway in the summer. 

“We are planning surface improvements to the Old River Road this summer,” Stutzke said. 

Work is funded through a Resource Advisory Committee grant awarded to Shoshone County, with county employees performing the work.

The improvements will start just above Albert’s Landing and extend to the Bumblebee Road intersection, as far up as Mile Marker 8. They should be finished before the Silver Bridge replacement in the fall. 

“There will be some safety improvements along Coeur d’Alene River Road from Kingston to Prichard and along Prichard Creek Road from Prichard to Murray,” Stutzke said. 

They will consist of some striping, and sign and guardrail replacements. There will also be a small length of rumble strips added to a section of Prichard Creek Road, all federally funded.