The North Fork Road will have a bit of a split personality this summer.

The lower section from Glacier Rim to the Camas Road saw a magnesium chloride treatment earlier this month, but the stretch from Camas to Coal Creek will go untreated, as Flathead County is awaiting a contract to be signed for the work.

That contract isn’t expected to be approved in time for the county to treat the upper road this summer, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty told the crowd at the North Fork Interlocal in mid-July.

The funding goes through the Resource Advisory Committee, which was established under the Reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. The committee recommends how to allocate a portion of federal funds counties receive under the law. 

The act directs that funds be spent on projects such as road, trail and infrastructure maintenance or obliteration, improvements in soil and forest ecosystem health, restoration and improvements of wildlife and fish habitat, control of weeds, and reestablishment of native animals and plants. Projects must benefit resources on National Forest lands and meet federal environmental laws.

But the committee missed a cycle, as members were not vetted. As such, the contract, about $29,000, needs approval by the Forest Service’s Washington offices and that will take some time.

Other road work has come to a notable end, Prunty said. The Federal Access to Lands project improved 5.5 miles of the upper road last year and put down asphalt millings on the Blankenship Road and Glacier Drive.

The latter road runs from the Polebridge townsite to the Polebridge entrance station to Glacier National Park.

For years the relatively short road was one of the roughest roads in the North Fork and it flooded in the spring.

The project installed new culverts, raised and improved the roadbed and placed asphalt millings from the Going-to-the-Sun Road down.

It was part of a $5.33 million job to fix not only Glacier Drive, but 5.5 miles of the North Fork Road from above Trail Creek to the Canada border.

The improvements have been a long time coming. The project first started in 2016. Funding came from a Federal Lands Access Program grant, with matching funds from Flathead County and other federal agencies.

The county chip sealed Glacier Drive as well as the paved section of the North Fork Road recently.

The magnesium chloride treatment on the lower end of the road was paid for through a three-year $137,000 Good Neighbor Authority grant.

County Commissioner Brad Abell told the crowd earlier this month that he’s hoping to get that grant extended into future years. It expires next year.