Quartzville Road has not had a good holiday season.
On Christmas Day, Dec. 25, a rockslide came down the slope above the road just past Milepost 13, burying about two-thirds of the roadway.
Kevin Hamilton, operations manager for the Linn County Road Department, said he was notified by a Linn County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher on the afternoon of Dec. 25 that a mountain deputy had come across the slide, and noticed that the remaining cliff face showed signs of possibly being ready to add to the rockpile on the road.
Hamilton said he referred the Sheriff’s Office to the Bureau of Land Management, because Linn County’s jurisdiction on the road only goes to Milepost 12, which is land owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“BLM said they didn’t have personnel available to deal with it, due to the holiday, so we sent personnel up to put out barricades and a sign at Sunnyside Campground,” Hamilton said .
What happens next remains to be seen, he said. Due to an early deadline, The New Era was unable to contact BLM before press time.
The rockslide occurred only a couple of days after the road was reopened to traffic following an approximately 10-day cleanup operation following a Dec. 14 crash in which a semi truck ran off the road near Milepost 32 and overturned with a load of snail poison pellets. The New Era had reported, based on information from authorities involved in the cleanup, that the road would be closed till May 1, but officials decided to reopen it after the newspaper went to press for its Dec. 25 edition.
Hamilton said another trucker actually drove up Quartzville on Friday, Dec. 27, after the warning sign had been placed at Sunnyside and had to get turned around when he reached the Milepost 13 barricade. Hamilton said he believed some local loggers helped the trucker get turned around.
The drivers are following “a number of different apps that are misdirecting people up Quartzville Road,” he said.
“I’m corresponding with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest Service and trying to get the BLM included, to try to get signage placed.”
Jurisdiction varies along the 50-mile road, Hamilton said. Linn County has had a lease since the 1960s, when the dams were built, to build and operate the paved portion on the south end of the road, which ends at Milepost 12. BLM is responsible for the road from that point to Miner’s Meadow, and the U.S. Forest Service is responsible for it from Miner’s Meadow to Highway 22.
“Everybody is on the same page to try to mitigate the problem,” Hamilton said. “We have a cooperative partnership with those other agencies.”
