Douglas County closes two roads for bridge repairs starting Monday

Douglas County Public Works closed two rural roads Monday for bridge repair projects that will cut off through traffic for weeks, including a seven-week closure on N 700 Road and a nine-week closure on N 1100 Road.

The first closure affects N 700 Road between E 2300 Road and E 2400 Road. The county said that work was expected to last seven weeks. The second closure is on N 1100 Road between U.S. 59 Highway and E 1400 Road, where repairs were expected to take nine weeks. In both places, access to nearby properties was being maintained, which mattered for residents, landowners and businesses located near the work zones.

County officials said the closures were tied to bridge repairs intended to improve road safety. No detour map was included with the notice, so drivers who normally use either corridor had to find alternate routes on the county’s rural road network. That included school transportation, farm traffic, delivery vehicles and emergency responders that depend on open crossings to move quickly between sections of unincorporated Douglas County.

The timing also underscored how much the county depends on a relatively small pool of road infrastructure. Douglas County Public Works maintains 224 miles of county roads, 158 bridges and 1,100 culverts, along with Lone Star Lake and seven county park sites. The department’s bridge crew handles bridge and culvert maintenance, while engineering staff manage design, construction administration, National Bridge Inventory compliance, right-of-way permits and state and federal funding.

The repairs also fit into a larger capital plan that puts heavy emphasis on roads and bridges. Douglas County’s 2026-2030 Capital Improvement Plan says roughly two-thirds of annual capital dollars go to Public Works projects and calls for eight bridge replacements over the next five years at an estimated cost of $12.6 million. A county capital plan notes the county replaced 50 bridges in the 1970s and 41 more in the 1980s, showing how long-term reinvestment has shaped the system now in use.

Douglas County has been steadily addressing older crossings as well. A bridge replacement on North 900 Road was announced for July 14, 2025, with an expected four-month timeline, and county records described that structure as a 1935 bridge over a tributary to Washington Creek. The county also closed East 1400 Road in 2020 for a bridge rehabilitation project over the Wakarusa River, while a planning document says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed the East 1000 Road bridge over the Wakarusa River in 1978 after construction of Clinton Lake and K-10. Roads inside Lawrence, Baldwin City, Eudora and Lecompton are maintained by those cities, not the county, leaving these rural corridors squarely in county hands as the work continues.