The Fight for Better Roads in Benton County
Travelers and locals decry the state of rural roads as political blame-shifting hinders repairs.
Fred E. Shaw returned last evening from Priest Rapids and reports that the roads between Yakima and that place are a fright. He says that without exaggeration there was a stretch of 15 miles where he could make no better than a mile an hour. In one place he negotiated about 300 yards in an hour. Mr. Shaw says practically all of the very bad stretches are in Benton County, where Kennewick and Benton City are able to exert sufficient pressure on the commissioners to prevent proper road work being done. It is the desire of those places that all traffic shall be diverted through them. Mr. Shaw says it would not require a great deal of money to put that road in good condition for travel. This piece of road is in the Cold Creek country and is every bit as Mr. Shaw says it is. That territory is in Commissioner McNeill’s district.
“He says that without exaggeration there was a stretch of 15 miles where he could make no better than a mile an hour.”
The frustration of rural residents with infrastructure neglect by county governments is a perennial issue. This 1916 dispute over road maintenance reads exactly like modern debates over transportation funding and whose needs are prioritized in regional planning.
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