A federal grant could help Deschutes County pave a troublesome stretch of road near public land.

Deschutes County’s road department is putting the finishing touches on a proposal to fund road projects through the Federal Land Access Program, a federal program designed to improve transportation onto well-traveled public lands. The two proposed projects — fixing pavement on Cascade Lakes Highway between Mt. Bachelor ski area and Elk Lake, and paving an approximately 4-mile stretch of Buckhorn Road, near Cline Buttes Recreation Area — would help improve county roads that connect to popular or newly developed areas of public land, according to Cody Smith, county engineer for Deschutes County’s road department.

The federal program provides $270 million annually to state, local and tribal governments to improve local access onto federally managed land.

Smith said the county has used the Federal Lands Access Program on past projects along Skyliners Road and S. Century Drive, to help offset their costs.

The county’s transportation plan designates Buckhorn Road as a rural connector road, but the road falls well short of the county’s requirements for that designation, according to Smith. The road is currently gravel, and is as narrow as 20 feet wide in some places, according to Deschutes County.

“So it certainly doesn’t meet our standards for a collector road,” Smith said during a meeting with the Deschutes County Commission last week.

The proposal would pave the road and widen it to 28 feet, including 2-foot shoulders, along the 4.3-mile project area. Smith added that the road department would add guard rails, trail crossings and signs to alert drivers to the presence of off-road vehicles and horseback riders.

Smith said the stretch of road connects to around 29,000 acres of federal land, including a new trail system that’s under construction. Last year, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the nearby public land and is assisting with the proposal, broke ground on the Buckhorn Staging Area trailhead, which will be designed to accommodate a variety of users.

Lisa Clark, public affairs officer for the Prineville district of the BLM, estimated that the trailhead is about 95 percent complete, with several camping areas still under construction. The larger Cline Buttes Recreation Area, located west of Redmond, includes 32,000 acres of land.

The county road department estimates that the project will cost $6.76 million. The current funding application proposes that the county would pay a little over $2 million of that total, with the federal program covering the rest of the cost. Smith said that breakdown reflects the percentage of people who use the road to reach federal lands.

The owner of at least one business was excited to hear about the project as well. Cindy Grossmann, owner of Faith, Hope and Charity Vineyards, a 15-acre vineyard west of Terrebonne, said she often directs visitors to the business down Buckhorn Road.

While she said Buckhorn Road is the fastest way to get from her business to Bend, she added that a number of tour buses and vendors use the gravel road, which leaves it in poor condition for much of the year.

“It will make so many people happy when it happens,” Grossmann said.

The other project will chip seal 10.3 miles of Cascade Lakes Highway, which provides access to about 500,000 acres of public land. Deschutes County is anticipating paying 50 percent of the project’s $784,379 price tag.

“This project fits into our chip seal program anyways,” Smith said.

The applications are due April 6. If accepted, they would provide federal funding during the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.

— Reporter: 541-617-7818, shamway@bendbulletin.com