Culvert sections are lowered into the trench at the Vance Creek construction site, milepost 11 of Highway 395, on Nov. 7. The old 5-foot round culvert is to the right of the new trench. The new culvert is 20 feet in diameter. The project is being constructed by Wildish Standard Paving of Eugene, Ore. Iron Triangle and Tidewater, both of John Day, also worked on the project.

Highway 395, the main north-south artery through Grant County, reopened to traffic Saturday afternoon, bringing to a close a 10-day race to dig out two large sections of the roadway, install huge new culverts and rebuild them.

Crews — some working around the clock in 12-hour shifts — raced the calendar and unpredictable fall weather to complete the project, said Al Frye, an operator-supervisor for Eugene-based Wildish Standard Paving, the prime contractor.

He estimated that between 20 and 30 people worked on the job.

“The weather cooperated,” he said, noting the lack of freezing temperatures and precipitation as his crew prepared to open the highway to traffic Saturday afternoon.

By later in the day the main roadway was completed and ready for traffic. Portions of the highway will still be one-lane and require flaggers until guardrails are installed and other work is completed.

By Friday, Nov. 20, all work should be done, and cleanup will be completed before Thanksgiving, he said.

The reopening of the highway reduces by several hundred miles the detour route between John Day and Burns, said Tom Strandberg, Oregon Department of Transportation Region 5 spokesman. Some drivers have used county and other roads as shortcuts, he said, but the official state highway detour sent traffic through Vale.

Work began Nov. 4 to replace two culverts that ran under the highway. The U.S. Forest Service had warned ODOT that, because of the massive wildfires that struck the area during the summer, the amount of debris and runoff could increase by 100 to 650 percent this winter, he said. The tributaries empty into Canyon Creek.

“Those culverts were not capable of handling it,” Strandberg said. “We wanted to take care of it before it washed out the road.” Engineers feared debris would block the culverts, back up the creeks and cause the highway to wash out.

One culvert at milepost 6.1 is a rectangular box design constructed of concrete, and the other, at Vance Creek at milepost 11 is a 20-foot diameter metal culvert. The bottoms of both were covered with gravel and rocks to emulate a stream bed and aid fish passage, Frye said.

Iron Triangle and Tidewater of John Day were subcontractors for Wildish, along with other companies.