BOARD01055

• Board Meeting Date: 6/29/1960
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

I

answered is the relocation of Highway 50.
The present plans, (and these plans are now
being actively pursued by the Colorado State
Highway Department), are to relocate Highway
50 in this manner; Starting in the vicinity
of Cooper's Resort you will see that the con-
templated highway shown here in orange goes
north of the present highway upon the high
ground above the river bed. It reverts to
the high ground above the river bottom and
the present highway over to a point a little
northeast of Tex Lodge where it connects up
with the existing highway. The existing
highway is shown here in green. This is at
a point just west of Trouthaven and swinging
back to the north around the backup water in
East Elk Creek, crossing East Elk Creek and
staying again on the high ground above the
existing highway until a point about where
Four !file Gulch enters into the Gunnison
River, Now that's a point about midway be-
tween West Elk Creek and Red Creek, and there
bridging the reservoir with a bridge approxi-
mately 1600 feet in length and approximately
250 feet in height, which will be quite a
spectacular bridge. This is to get the high-
way over to the south side of the reservoir.

This area, from that point on, was just
too difficult to keep the highway on the
north side of the reservoir. It is very
difficult terrain to build highways over. It is
not practical to keep the highway from that
point on the north side of the river. Of
course it is preferable to keep this highway
on the north side of the reservoir if possi-
ble, along the entire length of the reservoir,
because that is the southern exposure from
these mountains above, whereas over here you
have a northern exposure and, in this climate,
that means a lot of ice on the highway through-
out most of the winter. So it is desirable
to actually keep the highway over on the
southern exposure as much as possible, but
it is not practical from this point. There-
fore, the plans call for swinging across the
reservoir to the south side of the river.

I

Then keeping on the high ground on the
south side, and then to swing up over the
Lake Fork at a point approximately a mile or