Board may hitch a ride on plan for wagon train route.

Byline: COUNTY BEAT By Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

County commissioners will delve into a bit of history Wednesday when they decide whether to declare June 5 National Trails Day and throw their support behind a bill in Congress that could add a Lane County wagon train route to the federally recognized Oregon National Historic trail.

Back in 1852 - as told by the Oregon-California Trails Association - settlers in this part of the Willamette Valley wanted to increase their numbers. So they sent a group of "road viewers" to the east, to find a cutoff route that could link the valley with the Eastern Oregon wagon route established seven years earlier by Stephen Meek.

On that trip, the explorers met up with Elijah Elliott - who planned to bring a wagon train west in 1853, with 215 wagons, 615 men and 412 women and children - and convinced him that they'd have the new cutoff ready in time.

The early citizens of Lane, Linn and Benton counties blazed and cleared a path by the time the Elliott wagon train - its animals and people exhausted, low on supplies and facing winter snows - arrived in October. Riders went on ahead, and the Willamette Valley residents responded with 20,000 pounds of food, other supplies, and 290 head of fresh livestock, and guided the newcomers to safety through what's now Oakridge and Lowell to Eugene.

The new route became known as the Free Emigrant Road, because unlike some other routes to the west, users didn't have to pay tolls to follow it. The trail remained in use well into the 1860s. History buffs have retraced much of the route, and fragments can still be seen in places.

Residents upset about

roads and parks

The commissioners probably will face a couple of far more contentious issues at their Wednesday meeting, as county residents raise objections about park land and a road project.

The board voted in January to sell a 40-acre parcel it owns in the Florence area, known as Ocean Woods, and to use the proceeds to upgrade some other county park facilities. But people who live near Ocean Woods say the county shouldn't renege on the idea of the woodsy natural area into a park.

Now, the commissioners will have to decide whether to stick with their previous action and put the property up for auction, or rethink their decision.

Farther east near Walton, people who live along Stagecoach Road don't want to have to take a nearly 30-mile detour over dangerous, twisting roads for two months while crews repair a slide-prone area and repave a 0.7-mile stretch just off Highway 126. Keeping the road partially open - allowing in-and-out traffic during morning and evening hours - would add $30,000 to the cost of the project.

But that's not the only problem. The low bid for the project came in $650,000 over the amount set aside for the project in the county's road construction budget. So, the commissioners will have four choices: award the contract and close the road for 60 days; award the contract with partial closure of the road and pay a higher cost; postpone the project for a year and re-evaluate what should be done; or cancel the project and do minimal repairs to keep a one-lane road operating through the slide area.

Improvement projects

cost less than budgeted

On the other hand, once in awhile things actually work out better than expected.

When the county's Public Works Department totted up the price tags of some of the capital improvement projects it did last year, a good number of them actually cost less than budgeted.

The painting and reroofing of the Coyote Creek and Lake Creek covered bridges totaled $97,000 instead of $150,000, while the reconstruction of the Frank Parrish Bridge off Seavey Loop came in $600,000 under budget.

The actual reconstruction costs on Irvington Drive between River Road and the Northwest Expressway was a whopping $1.1 million under budget, and a project on Marcola Road from Parsons Creek to Wendling Road penciled out with a surplus of $400,000.

The county's budget for road-related construction and maintenance for the fiscal year that begins in July will be $30 million.

Of that amount, $2.5 million goes to cities throughout the county for their road projects, and another $1.6 million has been pledged to the federal courthouse project in downtown Eugene.

Randi Bjornstad can be reached at 338-2321 or [e-mail].