Vt. Police Close Improvised Exit on I-89
By Alex Hanson
Valley News Staff Writer
Royalton -- When the White River broke out of its banks, Devin Noyes and some friends were down on Route 107 helping move trailers from Lucky's Trailer Sales to higher ground.
As the river swept debris past them, Noyes wondered how he was going to get back to his parents' home on Cleveland Brook Road.
A state Transportation worker was right there, Noyes said. They asked him if they could cut through the fence on Interstate 89. He said it was OK, so Noyes, Adam and Tim Lyman and their father jumped in a couple of Jeeps and put their bolt-cutters to work.
“We ended up cutting a road,” Noyes, 22, said yesterday. “We told a couple of people and then it spread like wildfire.”
When the history of Tropical Storm Irene's devastation of Vermont is written, there should be a short chapter about the Hillbilly Highway. The improvised exit onto Interstate 89 in Royalton had a brief, eventful life before it was shut down by the state police on Wednesday.
Without the Hillbilly Highway, which was just about half a mile south of Exit 3, residents of Royalton Hill, Johnson Hill and Back River roads in Royalton would have been trapped. Gilman Road was impassable. Back River Road, a direct route to South Royalton, remains washed out, and two bridges that link the back roads to Route 14 are in ruins. “Where I live, we had no other way,” Holly Nash Wolff, who lives on Johnson Hill Road, said yesterday.
The off- and on-ramp for what Noyes and his friends dubbed Exit 23⁄4 skirts the edge of the market garden at the home of Jim and Rachel Bigelow.
“It was amazing how quickly word got around that it was open, and how quickly word got around that it was closed down,” said Rachel Bigelow, who set up a farmstand next to the break in the chain-link fence. The farmers markets she attends in Bethel and Pittsfield were closed or inaccessible.
A state police trooper stopped by while Noyes and friends were cutting open the fence on Aug. 28. They explained to Trooper Chris Blais what they were doing. He promptly told them to carry on.
It probably didn't hurt that Blais, like Noyes and Adam Lyman, is a member of a Vermont Jeep club. Noyes and Lyman are part of Green Mountain Crawlers, whose members helped open roads and rescue people around the state after Irene.“When the storm had just passed and people couldn't get out, we allowed that to happen,” said Lt. Bill Jenkins, commander of the state police's Royalton Barracks. “It was innovative, and they did what they had to do,” he added.
But once Gilman Road was reopened, a few days after the storm, the need for Exit 2¾ -- or Exit 2½, Exit 2B or Exit 3A as it has been variously called -- diminished.
The state police tried to close the exit a couple of times before it finally stuck on Wednesday. Last Saturday, the state Agency of Transportation even marked the area with cones and a sign saying “Local Traffic Only” in an effort to make the exit safer, Bigelow said.
Now, motorists on Royalton and Johnson hills have to drive on Gilman Road to Bethel, then turn around and drive Route 107 and Route 14 to get back to South Royalton, turning a 3-mile drive into a 15-20 mile slog.
Keeping the exit open for convenience's sake isn't in the cards, Jenkins said.
“It's a pretty big safety issue, really,” he said.
Motorists were making U-turns on the interstate to get to the exit, and people driving off the Hillbilly Highway were tracking a slick layer of mud onto the pavement. The exit wasn't properly marked, Jenkins said, Drivers on the interstate would not expect traffic to merge or exit at that spot.
When a state trooper came by on Wednesday to close it down, he was a bit testy, Bigelow said. A couple members of the town road crew were smoothing out the muddy road, and police, who had already wired the fence shut at least once, were none too pleased about it.
“His exact words to me were ‘What the f--- are you guys doing?' ” Corey Rogers said yesterday. He and his father, Terry Rogers, had helped keep the road in reasonable shape, despite the traffic. People used the road carelessly, and that was its undoing, Terry Rogers said.
“It basically got abused, that's what happened,” he said. The trooper ordered them to make a berm and shut the fence.
The need for an exit onto I-89 between Sharon and Bethel hasn't gone away. There's a plan in the works to put an exit for emergency vehicles where Oxbow Road crosses over the highway, and Exit 2¾ might spur officials to act. There's another impromptu exit for a granite quarry in Bethel, which takes heavy trucks off narrow gravel roads.
For now, Exit 2¾, the Hillbilly Highway, passes into myth. Gas prices being what they are, desire for a shortcut is very real.
“We do wish it was still open,” Holly Nash Woolf said.
That day might come, Terry Rogers said.
“If we have another flood, it'll probably be opened up again.”
Alex Hanson can be reached at
ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3219