Celestine Road North bridge work to close road for five weeks
Celestine Road North will shut near State Road 545 on June 3, forcing drivers onto alternate routes for about five weeks while crews replace the bridge deck and beams.
Drivers in the Celestine area will lose one of their local connectors when Celestine Road North closes 0.16 miles south of State Road 545 on Wednesday, June 3, for bridge deck and beam replacement. The Dubois County Highway Department says the work should take about five weeks, weather permitting, and the disruption will be felt most quickly by people using that stretch for school runs, farm traffic, deliveries, emergency access and commutes.
The closure is small on the map but large in daily consequence. Anyone who normally cuts through that corridor will need alternate routes for the duration of the project, and the timing means the detour will stretch into the summer travel season for nearby households and businesses. Because the work involves both the bridge deck and beams, it is more than a surface repair and requires the road to stay closed while crews remove and replace structural components.
Dubois County is treating the job as part of a broader maintenance push rather than a one-off inconvenience. The highway department says it has 31 employees, including a four-member bridge crew, and is responsible for 164 bridges over 20 feet long across a 660-mile county road system. County officials have said road and bridge decisions are made within current budget restraints, a reminder that every closure reflects tradeoffs between keeping traffic moving and keeping aging infrastructure safe.
The county has also been pressing for outside funding to stretch its bridge work further. In January, officials said Dubois County had $1 million in Community Crossings grant money for paving and was seeking up to $3.789 million in federal Bridge Safety Improvement Project funds that could improve safety on 50 to 60 county bridges. Levi Leffert, the county engineer, has said that federal application is still part of the county’s 2026 work plan.
Celestine Road North has seen this kind of disruption before. The road was closed for bridge replacement beginning July 30, 2018, about three-quarters of a mile south of State Road 545, in a project that was also expected to last about four weeks, depending on weather. That earlier closure showed how vulnerable the corridor can be when major bridge work is needed, and the new project puts the same stretch back in the county’s maintenance cycle.
The Celestine job is one piece of a busy 2026 schedule that has included bridge and paving work across Dubois County, including projects on Club Road, Dubois Road NE and St. Anthony Road North and West. For residents in Celestine, the immediate issue is simpler: one road will be closed, the detour will be unavoidable, and the county expects the pain to last roughly five weeks unless weather pushes the work back.
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