STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

After three months of being closed for road construction, Buttercup Road reopened only to be closed again.

This time, however, it was a brief closure of five minutes. Just enough time for a ribbon cutting.

Blaine County officials staged a ribbon cutting on the three-mile stretch of road north of Hailey this past week to celebrate its new smooth expanse of pavement. Eleven people took part, along with Ollie—Blaine County Commissioner Lindsay Mollineaux’s 6-month border collie Australian shepherd mix, who by all accounts is a great mouser.

“The project was a great marriage between Burks Excavation and the county,” said Beau Burks, owner of Burks Excavation.

Buttercup Road was in pretty bad shape before the reconstruction, said Steve Thompson, the county’s Road and Bridge manager. It was too narrow, it was cracked and it had drainage issues near West Meadow Drive.

“It and Gannett Road are among the busiest roads in the county so we needed to address the problems,” he added.

Burks Excavation took the old pavement to the dirt, milling it to use in the new beginning in mid-August. Crews replaced culverts to allow better drainage. And they widened the narrow road, adding two feet on each side as they expanded the road from 22 feet to 26 feet.

The $2.4 million project was paid for with a $2 million grant from the Strategic initiatives Grant Program. The remaining $400,000 came from the county’s Road and Bridge Fund.

Burks said his crew worked so fast that the road was ready to be paved on Sept 24. But the paving contractor was not scheduled until late October so the road sat for 2.5 weeks before the paving contractor could complete the project.

Thompson said the dirt alongside the road is mostly rocky soil so it should seed itself.