The destruction of our canyon

Trees have been removed and the road
continually blocked

Those of you who are familiar with Salina
and specifically our Gold Run canyon will
be shocked the next time you visit. Disaster
has struck. We had a meeting with the County
Engineer some weeks ago and he told us they
were planning to re-pave our road and that
would require removing the old boilers the
miners had used for culverts with modern
culverts. Hence sections of the road would
be closed most of July and access to Gold
Hill via Gold Run would be closed all that
time.

We were not thrilled, but accepted that.

Tree removed across the road from Vernon's
What we didn't realize was that the culverts
they would be installing are huge. They
look like the spillways for the Boulder
Dam! The culverts are concrete and have
a large concrete apron and in addition huge
concrete "wings" attached on each side
of the culvert. They are huge and ugly
and deface the creek something fearful.
The Engineer seems to realize, a little,
that this isn't too attractive so they
are adhering moss rock to the concrete
faces...this may look better or may just
look silly.

In the meantime we are faced with huge
machines going by in both directions
about 10 hours a day! They are noisy,
dirty, smelly and disgusting. We
also are stuck with flaggers, some of
whom are rude, sarcastic and obnoxious.
Clearly, it hasn't been a pleasant
atmosphere here for some time! However,
we have been lucky because our part of
the road has been open most of the time.
However, one of the less intelligent of
the flaggers told our mail carrier the
road was closed and he wasn't allowed to
pass so we had no mail delivery yesterday
and probably will not for most of next week.
We have arranged to leave a car below
the construction that will be across from
Vernon's next week.

That is another disaster. They plan to
blast the corner away so it is no longer
a blind corner. Vernon complained
mightily and now they are "just" going
to scrape the rocks off...In any case
the natural moss rocks will disappear and
we'll have a raw wound plus a huge concrete
mess at the corner.

Clearly, I'm not happy about it nor are most,
if not all, of our neighbors

I'll add pictures of the finished culverts if/when
I can get close enough to do so.