Make our newscast part of your daily listening routine. Subscribe on Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts).
Teton Pass is slated to be closed next weekend, from 6 p.m. on June 20 to 6 a.m. on June 23, as crews pave the final stretch of roadway in the same spot of las year’s collapse. The plan is to finish before the 4th of July weekend.
Sunday, June 8 marked a year since a landslide left a 90-foot-wide chasm in the highway connecting western Wyoming to eastern Idaho.
The 60-year-old section of Highway 22 slid last summer in what the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) called a “catastrophic failure” of the road.
Gov. Mark Gordon declared a state of emergency. Staff from WYDOT and crews from a local contractor were on site 24/7 and built a detour within three weeks.
The pass closure nearly tripled the drive time for tourists coming from the east and commuters from Idaho to Jackson. About 40% of Teton County’s workforce commutes, with an estimated 14% living in Idaho and working in Wyoming, according to a regional housing needs assessment from 2022.
Since the detour provided a temporary fix, crews from Utah-based Ames Construction have been working on a permanent fix, which means rebuilding in the same spot with more support.
WYDOT resident engineer Bob Hammond led the project. He said it was almost Christmas by the time construction finished in 2024.
“They were back out there at the first of April to start moving snow to get things going again this spring,” he said.
The new roadway, with more gradual grades and gentler turns, should last longer, he said. Along with dirt, it’s supported in-part by recycled glass, about 40 million bottles worth.
“It has a design life of 75 plus years,” Hammond said.
Finishing the project took about six months longer than originally projected and cost the state and feds $43 million.
