Buffalo Gap Road Project to improve public land access
Travis Bateman
Farmer Staff Writer
A second meeting was held March 30, that seeks to improve local traffic and maintain public lands access throughout a large portion of Billings and Golden Valley counties as they faced a dilemma that could just as much happen here in McKenzie County with certain roads crossing through private property.
A unique arrangement of two counties coming together to facilitate a unified solution to a shared problem has been taking place since last fall and it is one that’s been in the making for over two decades. All it took was a transfer of land ownership from father to daughter and suddenly what was once and had been a shortcut to a large and popular portion of land was now cutoff and everything beyond it is now further away both in terms of time and miles.
The problem arose last year when a private landowner chose to cut off through traffic on their property of what is known as West River Road, northwest of Medora and north of I-94. The closure, legally within the owners rights to do so, created two major issues. First, a triple of the miles driven to reach locations to the north of the closure and second, increased traffic to the next available road to the west that was not designed for nor capable of handling traffic to the volume to which it would undoubtedly experience year round. But that road however, is now seen as the solution to address this dilemma. It just needs the required work and all the fixings.
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