State seeks public comment on McDowell County road abandonment proposal

The smallest part of County Route 7/12 may also be the one that matters most to the people tied to it: the West Virginia Division of Highways is seeking public comment on a proposal to abandon 0.040 mile of the old route in McDowell County, a change that could alter maintenance responsibility, legal mapping and access for nearby property owners.

The notice, published April 16, says the segment begins about 0.120 mile northwest of the junction of new County Route 7/12 and County Route 7, then runs southerly along the old alignment before ending at a point on the former route. WVDOH District 10 requested the abandonment on behalf of an adjacent property owner, but the notice does not spell out why the old section is no longer needed.

The state is not ordering an immediate closure. It is opening a public comment window through April 25, giving McDowell County residents and affected landowners a chance to object, ask questions or weigh in before the route is formally removed from the county road system. Comments or meeting requests may be sent by email to DOTHDS@wv.gov or mailed to the Commissioner of Highways in Charleston.

The request sits inside a larger highway-management system that tracks route changes across the state. WVDOH says its Road Abandonment Hub posts current and past proposed abandonments, along with public comment links for active cases, and the McDowell County CR 7/12 item appears there as an open-comment case. District 10, headquartered in Princeton, serves McDowell, Mercer, Raleigh and Wyoming counties, with William R. Murray, P.E., listed as district engineer and manager.

The proposal also lands at a time when McDowell County is still living with the effects of the February 2025 flood, which damaged roads and bridges across the county. FEMA’s disaster summary made major disaster assistance available for McDowell and three neighboring counties, and state officials later said WVDOH had allocated an estimated $19 million for 184 road and infrastructure repairs in McDowell County alone.

For a county where transportation disruptions have carried real costs, even a 0.040-mile change is more than a line on a map. WVDOH says its GIS maps are for general reference only and county highway maps are updated yearly, underscoring that this decision is part of an active mapping and ownership process, not a clerical footnote.