The paved road between Sumpter and Granite will be closed near Granite on weekdays for up to six straight weeks starting Monday, July 7, while a contractor replaces five aging culverts to make it easier for salmon and other fish to pass.

Grant County Road 24, also known as the Granite Hill Highway and part of the Elkhorn Drive Scenic Byway, will be open on weekends during construction, from Friday evening through early Monday morning, said Alan Hickerson, Grant County roadmaster.

The weekday closures could continue for six weeks, into mid-August.

Hickerson said on Tuesday, June 24, that he is working with the contractor, Cascade Civil Corp. of Redmond, to set up an alternate route, for emergency vehicles and mail and package deliveries only, that would be available on weekdays when the road is closed to vehicles.

The project has been in the works for about five years, Hickerson said.

“This is a huge project,” he said.

The Federal Highway Administration is overseeing the project. A spokesperson for the agency had not responded, as of Tuesday morning, to a request from the Baker City Herald for information including the cost.

The culvert replacements are separate from, but related to, an effort led by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservoir to restore a reach of Bull Run Creek that parallels the highway, Hickerson said.

Workers will replace five culverts that are old and likely to fail, he said.

At three places, crews will install precast concrete box culverts. These are similar to structures that were placed years ago on Bull Run Creek at two places near Granite, where the highway meets Forest Service roads 7375 (Corrigal Springs) and 7370 (Mount Ireland trailhead).

At the two other sites, workers will replace the existing metal culvert with a concrete bridge.

The sites are along several miles of Bull Run Creek, starting on the outskirts of Granite.

Visitors can still reach Granite by other routes, including from the north, along the Elkhorn Drive byway via either Anthony Lakes, Starkey or Ukiah, and from the west, via either Clear Creek or Forest Road 10 (Dale-Olive Lake).

Stream restoration

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are working with two partnering agencies to try to restore a section of Bull Run Creek that is spawning habitat for chinook salmon and was altered by gold dredging more than a century ago.

It’s a tributary of Granite Creek and the North Fork John Day River.

The tribes, based in Pendleton, are focusing on a 2-mile reach of Bull Run Creek, about two miles southeast of Granite, where historic dredging churned the stream’s floodplain and confined the stream between layers of gravel and stones known as tailings, making the stream less suitable as habitat for salmon and other fish.

The tribes know the stream as Kuckucéepe téekin.

Mining resulted in a creek channel that is straight rather than meandering, and it narrowed the historic floodplain from what he estimates was 150 to 200 feet wide to just 25 to 30 feet now, John Zakrajsek, a habitat biologist for the tribes, said in 2023.

The changes wrought by dredging are especially apparent in the lower reaches of the project, where the valley widens and where the floodplain would have also broadened in the past, he said.