St. Louis County road maintenance divided into four districts
Four districts now cover 3,395 miles of county roads, with crews from Cook to Pike Lake and Ely. The system reflects a county that spans 7,000 square miles.
St. Louis County’s road maintenance system is split into four districts that together cover 3,395 miles of county-maintained roads, with crews responsible for more than 600 bridges and over 3,000 miles of road in a county that stretches across 7,000 square miles.
St. Louis County was established by legislative act on March 1, 1856, and named for the St. Louis River. Today it serves 27 cities, 73 townships, 74 unorganized townships and portions of two Indian reservations from offices in Duluth, Virginia, Hibbing and Ely.
The district lines do not follow neat straight borders. Instead, they are built around towns, cities and townships, and residents can use an address search tool to identify the district that handles a property. Local offices are supervised by district highway superintendents.
The 4th Maintenance District covers about 2,700 square miles and maintains about 904 miles of roads. The 5th District maintains about 903 miles, the 6th about 871 miles and the 7th about 717 miles. Scott Olson is 4th District highway superintendent, Gordy Halverson for the 5th, Gerald Vanguilder for the 6th and Chad Walters for the 7th. The 4th District is staffed through the Cook and Ely offices, while the 5th District is based at Pike Lake.
County Board members approved $40 million in bonding in 2015 and another $25 million in 2016 for transportation sales tax-backed road work. St. Louis County invested $120 million in transportation-sales-tax-related funding over five years, including $65 million in bonding, and roughly one-third of the transportation sales tax burden is paid by non-residents who drive, work, shop and visit in St. Louis County. The county’s transportation sales tax FAQ puts a half-percent tax at about $10.5 million a year, while the equivalent amount through property taxes would have required a 9.3 percent levy increase.
Winter turns the district map into a frontline service test. It is responsible for snow and ice removal on county roads, plus some township roads and city streets under interagency agreements, and its goal is to restore county-maintained roads to a passable condition as quickly as possible after a snow event.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
