Tucked among tall timber west of a private golf course near Loxley, a five-mile ribbon of red dirt known as Truck Trail 17 has become an unexpectedly thorny problem for local and county leaders in Baldwin County, who cannot agree on who should pay to fix its aging wooden bridges.
The quiet route links Wilcox Road to Highway 59, far from the busy development farther south in the county. But its weathered spans are a growing worry. One of them, the Styxx River bridge, a wooden structure rated for vehicles of three tons or less, was slated to close because of its poor condition, forcing the handful of residents who live along the trail to take longer detours to reach the highway.
For the town of Loxley, the core issue is cost. Mayor Billy Middleton said a modern concrete bridge could run $2 million to $3 million, an expense the town simply cannot absorb within its roughly $5 million annual general fund budget. Even a state grant requiring a 20 percent local match, which he estimated at around $600,000, was too steep, and he said the town lacked the ability to borrow the money. Loxley did spend about $100,000 on a temporary fix to the nearby Reedy Creek bridge to preserve access for a small number of rural households.
County officials framed the dispute as part of a larger pattern in which smaller towns annex rural territory without the resources to maintain the roads and bridges that come with it. The Styxx River bridge was folded into Loxley about seven years earlier, while the nearby Roans Creek bridge stayed under county control. The county is moving ahead with a roughly $1 million replacement of Roans Creek, funded largely through the state’s ATRIP program, with work expected within nine months.
“They are depriving them of a road,” Baldwin County Commission President Charles “Skip” Gruber said of the annexation, adding that the county would not abandon the project if it were its own. Commissioners Chris Elliott, Tucker Dorsey and Frank Burt Jr. echoed the strain, noting the county already maintains some 1,600 miles of road and faces its own tight budget.
Beyond the immediate repairs, officials see long-term stakes tied to the Baldwin Beach Express. County Engineer Cal Markert said the road, about four miles from Interstate 10, would likely need to be paved and upgraded to serve as a connector and emergency evacuation route if the Beach Express is extended north toward Interstate 65. A proposed interchange would sit between Reedy Creek and the Styxx River.
One ambitious idea floated a $29 million plan to pave the 5.4-mile road and replace its bridges, pitched for possible funding tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlements. But its status remained uncertain, and for the moment, with no money in hand, the little truck trail’s future stayed stuck in limbo.