GOSHEN COUNTY – Goshen County Road and Bridge, Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT), and the county surveyor, are working on keeping travelers safer during dangerous weather conditions and other unfavorable traffic situations. 

According to Bob Taylor, Goshen County Surveyor, Goshen County has a large amount of irrigated acres compared to the surrounding counties. This means there are a lot of roads and infrastructure such as bridges, culverts and drainage structures to maintain. As Goshen County is very agriculturally based and an important route for many truckers, it is reasonable to have so many roads. 

According to road and bridge’s Val Hankins, the county is about 75 miles by 35 miles. There are 1,200 miles of road within the county. 

 The problem with this is there are so many roads to maintain. Goshen County also has several a few roads with difficult terrain. These can be difficult enough to navigate in good weather conditions. By winter, they could be covered in multiple feet of snow. 

“Meyer’s Hill for example, is one of our worst spots and has a grade of 10% to 12%. In trucking, you get warned at 6%,” Taylor said. 

Chris Stoddard of Goshen County Road and Bridge, added it is actually up to 13% grade now. “We have up to 13% grade and it’s really bad and it’s really narrow and it’s hard to upgrade it because it’s really bad and it’s really narrow, it’s gravel. They (trucks) get in there, even in good weather when the road is open and dry, it’s tough. It’s loose gravel and there are some pretty good, sharp bends in there and it makes it difficult for them to navigate that road,” Stoddard continued. 

For out-of-town travelers, these roads are new and especially dangerous. When the main highway is closed, vehicles typically get rerouted to these county roads. Or, to shave a little time off their trips, travelers take a shortcut. Their maps choose an alternative route, not knowing the roads are covered in snow and unsafe for travel. 

Goshen County also has a variety of commercial trucks using county roads. Truckers come from all over the area. It can be difficult to communicate to these drivers about road closures or unsafe conditions. Many of these truckers are out of town travelers and get stranded on the side of these roads. 

Our road and bridge workers then have to come out and help them out of the snow. Stoddard shared a story of how in the middle of the night, one of the blade operators was dispatched with the sheriff to the far north part of the county to help get a person who was stranded on one of the gravel roads. Had they not, the person may have frozen in the blizzard. There was so much snow on the road, at times it was difficult for the blade operator to see over the front of his plow. 

On another occasion, a blade operator had to plow to an out-of-state family who had gotten themselves onto a blowing and drifting road south and west of Yoder while trying to get to Denver International Airport. They were in shorts and flip-flops. If the road is dangerous enough for someone to get stranded, it is not safe for all these people to travel to the area either. The road and bridge, WYDOT and the county surveryors have so many of these stories about how so many people have been put in danger due to the maps being unaware of the poor conditions. 

For this reason, the group is trying to prevent people from getting stranded, so people do not have to risk themselves to go out there and help. Although road and bridge workers would like to go ahead and repair and maintain these roads, they span so far and wide, it takes a lot of time as well as being costly to the department. They also cannot simply make the roads weatherproof. 

What road and bridge and Taylor are working on, is a base map of what roads can be dangerous in these conditions, and they are working with WYDOT to get these roads documented under poor conditions. 

Many know WYDOT has an entire list of road closures. This can be difficult with as many little roads as we have in the county. As these folks are working on this, it will make it so much easier to notify travelers of road closures. 

Most mapping apps use department of transportation information to create their maps and routes. If WYDOT knows these roads are closed, they are far less likely to be suggested as alternative routes and there will be alerts of their closures. This will keep people out of those areas and much safer.

The group is still working out details on how to provide accurate data to WYDOT to close the roads to nonlocal people, but they are hoping the final data will be provided within the next month or so. They have been putting this together and trying to put it into action for quite some time. They are very close to completing the project. The group has everything they need at the moment; They just need to update the base map and get it active with WYDOT.