Pothole woes near Colorado's Eleven Mile State Park: Road damage will break your car, boat, trailer
You know when a road has its very own website, things have gotten bad. That's the case for Colorado Highway 90 and 92, near Eleven Mile State Park in Park County, plagued with potholes that can do serious damage.
Rick Steinsick who runs the general store nearby said his parking lot fills with drivers who have done tens of thousands of dollars in damage to their vehicle, or trailer, or boat, depending on what took the brunt of the damage from the potholes.
"The potholes on this road on the asphalt are just horrendous, the dirt roads are better than the pothole roads," Steinsick said. "The potholes are so deep we have had several vehicles that have broken rims, broken the beads off, we lose a boat axel, tires, wheels, springs, boat frames have to be welded before they can drive em home... it is insane how bad it is up here."
That's the main reason Maryann McLendon took it upon herself to gather the neighbors together and try to figure out how to get the county's attention to get the potholes fixed. That, and she lives in the neighborhood, and her daughter blew out a tire while learning to drive in one of the potholes.
"We ended up with a piece of another vehicle... a piece of metal lodged into the tire," McLendon said. "People come here and hit a pothole, their whole trip is ruined."
In her efforts to corral support for the county to take on their road repairs, she learned the price tag to get the roads back up to snuff; $7-$9 million. That's money that newly appointed Park County Director of Operations Mike Smith said simply isn't in the budget, even with $7 million in surplus funds which he admits his predecessor mismanaged.
"If I were to completely deplete the $7 million in reserves, I wouldn't get half of the roads that we are talking about down there," Smith said. "We are really looking into how we can leverage the money that we do have and how we can bring some of that improvement back online."
Smith also said the department has had significant issues keeping staff amidst pricing competition, and making sure they have the people to do the work in the county has to come before everything can be fixed (and he does mean everything, he estimated every single road in Park County could use some love.)
Still, even though he is projecting it will take years before the neighbors worried about CO 90 and 92 have the solution they're looking for (at least on the county's end, more on that later) he's hoping county residents will see him walk the walk, he knows nothing he says will convince them at this point.
"I think we are past the part where we can say 'You gotta trust us, we are almost there'...come watch us, come watch what happens next, we are right on the cusp of big things happening next year."
Speaking of county efforts, Park County Commissioner Amy Mitchell said she has been fighting to try and get funding to fix the situation with CO 90 and 92 for more than a year now, along with the help of local State Senator Baisley to get a bill passed to get funding partially through the Colorado Parks and Wildlife State Park Pass funding (considering the roads to go a state park, which is driving a lot of the traffic, and road wear). That bill was changed multiple times and while in the end it passed, Mitchell said it no longer would help them get the funding they needed, and would instead start a study that would address just how bad the roads are, before anything else happened (which should finish in June, according to Mitchell.)
"It's very frustrating. I actually even took director of the Natural Division of Natural Resources Dan Gibbs on a tour of those roads and we hit some potholes and I could not get him to admit that we needed help," Mitchell said. "We're not done."
Mitchell said she also has been working to find grants, one of which was denied, and the other stalled in Washington D.C., but once the study is completed, she'll take the findings back to the state which she believes should chip in to help fix the issue.
"I really hope ultimately the state will realize that it's their park and that they need to partner with us to solve the problem, to allow everyone who wants to visit Eleven Mile State Park, which is awesome, to be able to visit safely and enjoy the park. That's it."
