by Michael Howell
Ravalli County has approximately 1450 miles of public roadway, but only about 550 miles of those roads are maintained by the Ravalli County Road Department and of those 550 miles of roadway only about 300 miles are paved. The other 250 miles are graveled.
Just keeping up with the maintenance on the current 300 miles of pavement is a daunting task. The commissioners agreed a few years ago that just to maintain the status quo would require upgrading more than 16 miles of pavement annually. This coming season they are looking at a schedule to pave about 14 miles and in 2026 and the next year it’s down to 10 miles.
“If you take a Google trip and go scrolling down the county roads, you can see that there’s no end to this,” said Commissioner Jeff Burrows at the latest scheduling meeting. “There’s just crappy pavement everywhere. If you take a look,” he said, “they are all over the place… We need to be paving 16 miles per year, not 11 to 13.”
This year the longest stretch of road on the tentative schedule list, four miles on Willow Creek Road east of Corvallis, got bumped off the list.
The decision to drop the Willow Creek paving project was tied to potential funding from the Bitterroot National Forest that may not be available for a while.
Burrows noted that the county was working with the Forest Service on a joint effort. “They were looking at a big hauling project and said they were going to contribute, participate and mitigate. Where’s that at?” he asked.
“As it stands right now,” said Road Department Shop Manager Jim Bryan, “it’s still being litigated and on top of this, right now, they don’t have anywhere to take the timber. And all the profits off it would go into hauling it.” He said the road was in such bad shape, however, that if they wait too long it wouldn’t be worth saving and should just be ground up.
Road Department Administrator John Horat said, “I’m not certain that it’s ever going to get logged up there. It just seems like there’s just one lawsuit after another.“
“There won’t be a lot of incentive for them to participate if it’s a brand new paved road,” said Burrows. “I guess I’d like to see us re-prioritize this. I’d rather push Willow Creek out and do some more miles somewhere else.”
Willow Creek was dropped from the list and replaced by 2.34 miles of Sunnyside Cemetery Road and 1.5 miles of Ridge Road.
That yielded a new priority list for 2025 that now includes:
• Ricketts Road (Grant-others) 2.53 mi.
• Cherry Orchard Loop 1.90 mi.
• Kootenai Creek Rd. 0.90 mi
• Grizzly Way 0.52 mi.
• Harvey Lane 0.50 mi.
• S. Sunset Bench Road (subcontract) 1.80 mi.
• Honeyhouse (Willow Ck to Quast, subcontract) 1.76 mi
• Sunnyside Cemetery 2.34 mi
•Ridge Road 1.50 mi.
On the list for paving in 2026 are Illinois Bench Road 2.50 mi.; Martin Ln. (US 93 to Sundance) 0.56 mi.; Oilwell Road 1.75 mi.; and Willow Creek Cross Road 1.51 mi.
On the list for 2027 were Chief Victor Camp Road 0.64 mi.; Blodgett Camp Road 1.83 mi.; Florence town streets and Victor town streets.
Roads listed to be ground up and removed from the paving list include Ben, Little Joe, Meadow Lark, Florence Subdivision, Rose, Grant and Upper Burnt Fork School roads.