Blasting will continue this week on the project to widen North Carolina 105.
Crews are on the first leg of the project, where the 69-year-old bridge over the Watauga River is being replaced.
It requires careful work because the waterway is an important spot for trout fishing and is one of the homes to the elusive Hellbender salamander, says Brendan Spencer, a senior engineer in the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Boone Office.
He says N.C. 105 is a vital link carrying more than 20,000 vehicles a day between Boone and tourist areas like Valle Crucis and Grandfather and Sugar mountains. And that could grow to 40,000 in the next 10 years.
“The road system we have in place in this area, it’s hardly sufficient for the traffic we have now," he says. "And it will certainly not be sufficient for that increase.”
The project is both behind schedule and over budget. Spencer says that’s largely because what they expected to be solid rock along the roadway turned out to be dirt and boulders. That required a vast series of heavy netting to be added to keep debris from falling.
The bridge replacement was originally budgeted for about $20 million but is now running into the high 20s, Spencer says. The overall timeline to complete work has been pushed back to sometime in 2026.