Posted on 06/06/2019 12:52:58 PM PDT by Red Badger
A 8.5-million- pound boulder that demolished a Colorado mountain highway May 24 will stay in place and the road will be rebuilt around it, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said. Photo courtesy of Colorado Department of Transportation
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DENVER, June 5 (UPI) -- Colorado has a new Instagram-worthy landmark. An 8.5-million-pound boulder that rolled off a cliff and demolished a section of mountain highway has been renamed "Memorial Rock," Gov. Jared Polis said.
It would have cost the Colorado Department of Transportation $200,000 to blow up the boulder with dynamite and haul it away, but instead the department will rebuild Highway 145 to wind around the giant rock described as "the size of a house" between Cortez and Telluride in southwestern Colorado, Polis said.
"We expect that for generations to come, people will have the opportunity to observe this geological masterpiece that we're calling Memorial Rock," Polis said at a news conference earlier this week.
As part of a rock slide, two giant boulders tumbled about 2,000 feet from a mountain ledge onto the highway at the start of Memorial Day weekend. Transportation officials destroyed the smaller 2.3-million-pound rock with explosives.
The enormous boulder rock blocked traffic and closed down the highway. A local restaurant had to cancel their long-awaited Memorial Day motorcycle ride.
"There's a huge avalanche-size scar down the side of the mountain," said Brandy Randall, co-owner of the Enterprise Bar and Grill up the canyon from the rock in Rico, Colorado.
"Our maintenance guy was stuck in [the neighboring town of] Dolores for five days," said Rico's Town Manager Kari Distefano.
The highway will be widened with additional shoulder and a new guardrail will be installed near the rock, Lisa Schwantes, the transportation department's southwest Colorado spokeswoman, told UPI.
Fixing the two-lane highway will cost about $1.3 million, Polis said, but most of that money will come from emergency funds from the Federal Highway Administration.
"We lost a ton of business, but we hope people come back up later this summer," Randall said. "We were told the highway would be fixed by the Fourth of July."
"Everybody meet Memorial Rock.
"We will not be destroying this 8.5 million pound boulder - which is the size of a house. Instead, we're going to make a new state landmark and save taxpayers money.https://t.co/BlkgnKwBEM- Jared Polis (@GovofCO) June 4, 2019
ICWYDT...
We are such an ‘advanced’ civilization that we find we don’t know how to easily remove such a large rock, yet ancient civilizations found it no problem to move thousands of them ,which were even larger, many miles.
Cost to build highway around rock: $1.3 MILLION
Cost to break up rock & haul away: $200,000...
Spend 6.5 times to build new road & that is an advantage?
I guess my bookkeeping skills would have said NO WAY we are building new road.
Politicians keep spending taxpayer $$$$ with no restraint at all.
It’s nothing a little tactical nuke couldn’t handle. How close did they say the nearest town is?
The money comes from the Federal Government, IOW, US!
So the cost to Colorado taxpayers is minimal...............
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks that it is not a good idea to spend $1.3 million to save $200,000.
Save the taxpayers money.......... Yeah right
Blow up boulder 200K
Rerout highway 1.3 M
So for another 1.1 M we don’t have to our jobs.
“It would have cost the Colorado Department of Transportation $200,000 to blow up the boulder with dynamite and haul it away...
...Fixing the two-lane highway will cost about $1.3 million, Polis said, but most of that money will come from emergency funds from the Federal Highway Administration.”
Not sure how that is a good decision. $200K versus $1.3 million.
Good thing to sit on top of and eat some edibles?
It’s Colorado, so Rocky Mountain high............
yes, let’s save $200,000 by building a $1.3 million road around it!
That’s good governmenting!
You got that right! Went to an NFL game out there last year and they were giving away edibles in the parking lot!
Just paint a Tunnel Entrance on each side like the Coyote did in all those Roadrunner Cartoons.
Thanks for the post Red Badger...
What is missing is what kind of rock is this... Igneous, basalt or granite; Sedimentary... shale, or ?. If sedimentary, what is name of formation that it came from?
If this huge boulder weathered out, there are probably others waiting for their opportunity to roll down the mountain.
I am glad that there was no traffic on the hwy when this guy came rolling by.
The democnicrats will politicize anything.
Thanks for posting this. I’m renting a car and driving to Delores in 10 days to see family. I’ll have to check to see if Highway 145 can be avoided.
More impressive than the boulder would be the scale they weighed it on.
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