Why Doesn’t Anyone Want to Fix One of America’s Scariest Roads?

In the valley where I live, along a quiet stretch of the Uncompahgre River, in southwestern Colorado, there is only one paved road, and, like most people around here, I don’t drive it south without a good reason. In that direction, the road—U.S. Highway 550—passes through the small mountain town of Ouray, and then it climbs more than two thousand feet in the span of six miles. This section of the two-lane road has been carved directly into the red-quartzite cliffs of the Uncompahgre Gorge, and almost none of it has a shoulder; in some places, the highway is only twenty-three feet wide. The speed limit is twenty-five miles an hour, and one way to identify locals is that they often drive faster than that. This is because they worry about what can happen above the road. Rockfalls are common, and so are avalanches.

There are more than sixty named slide routes

There are more than sixty named slide routes along this part of the highway, and residents refer to them in personal terms, like bad neighbors who are always home: Riley Boy, Mother Cline, Slippery Jim. Highway 550 is the most avalanche-prone road that’s open year-round in the United States.