WALLACE — A busy section of road is at the top of Shoshone County Public Works Director Jessica Stutzke’s to-do list, but people are going to need to be patient.

Numerous drivers have complained about the 3-mile stretch of Silver Valley Road between Osburn and Wallace, specifically regarding the lack of visible road lines and markings.  

“We’ve definitely heard the complaints, both in-person and online,” Stutzke said. “And we’re going to address the issue as soon as possible. That section is very unique because it’s wider in some areas, with several spots with multiple lanes. It’s not just simple fog lines and center lines.”  

Tiffany Willer from Osburn wrote the Shoshone News-Press in December expressing her frustrations with the road. 

"The lines are so faded it makes it hard to tell what part of the road I am on at night because the lines are basically nonexistent," Willer wrote. "The roads have been repainted in Osburn and Wallace, but the road between Wallace and Osburn are in dire need of new paint." 

In the interim, the county has placed several delineators along the road to outline the road’s edges and curves.  

Stutzke had planned on getting the road chip sealed and painted during the 2024 construction season, but traffic diversions made that difficult.  

“We knew that the work on I-90 was going to divert some traffic from the freeway onto the road, but we didn’t know that everything east of Osburn was going to be closed and that the road would be handling all of the traffic,” Stutzke said. “We couldn’t, in good conscience, add more work and more delays to an area that was already experiencing higher than normal traffic.”  

According to Stutzke, the county budgeted $65,000 last year for road painting, which was spent remarking a 20-mile section of road along the St. Joe River in the southern region of Shoshone County, but the project ended up costing almost $90,000.

Stutzke hasn’t put the project out for bid but anticipates that it could cost between $10,000 to 20,000.

“When we do it, we’re going to do it right,” Stutzke said. “There are perfect conditions for this kind of work and that’s what we’ll be looking for, but it’s on our schedule to get done as soon as the weather allows.”