Drivers on their way to and from Nashville on State Road 46 East may have noticed some Salt Creek Trail construction happening near the RedBarn Jamboree.

Force Construction Company is moving “full speed ahead” on substructure work related to the bridges coming from Clay County that will be used to connect sections of the trail in Eagle Park, Highway Superintendent Mike Magner reported at the Sept. 18 Brown County Commissioners meeting.

The Eagle Park section will run from Brown County State Park to Parkview Road.

The construction company has been working on that section of the trail since late August, Magner said.

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The first bridge will go on the northwest corner of the school district’s Eagle Park property spanning over to the Parkview area near the RedBarn.

A second bridge over Salt Creek will be installed on land owned by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources in the state park.

The DNR is in charge of building the trail section on Eagle Park and state park property. The Indiana Department of Transportation is only handling the easements and placement of the bridge for that section.

In 2014, it was announced that a two-section, 400-foot-long, vehicular bridge owned by the state was coming to Brown County for use on the trail. INDOT offered to pay to rehab the bridge sections for their new use and place them on the trail.

“As a taxpayer it’s not costing us with no county money in the project,” Magner said in September.

Magner reported at the Sept. 18 meeting that the new bridge in Clay County had been open to traffic a few days before and that crews were beginning to demo the deck on the old bridges while finishing up the new one there.

Construction crews recently completed the temporary work bridge on the Parkview side of Eagle Park.

“They are permitted to do a temporary crossing for construction. They need to be able to get dirt across the creek into the park,” he said in September.

It is being used to haul materials over the creek to build the base for the east end bridge since equipment cannot enter the water.

The temporary work bridge can be seen from 46 behind the RedBarn Jamboree. The temporary bridge will also be used as a future platform to finish the reconstruction of the Clay County bridges once they arrive in Brown County, Magner said.

The temporary bridge will be removed after the bridge trusses are complete. It is located “very close” to where the actual bridge will go, he added.

The foundations for the Parkview side bridge are estimated to be completed next month and the foundations for the state park side bridge are expected to be done in February. Construction on the state park side bridge has not yet started.

Work to disassemble the bridge trusses has began in Clay County and is estimated to wrap up in January. The trusses will then be painted and cleaned next March with the reassembly estimated to begin in June.

The construction of the new bridge decks and railing are set to start next September.

But dates are subject to change due to weather, Magner said.

Once the bridges are disassembled in Clay County they will be hauled to a plant for refurbishing.

“Anything that does not meet the structural criteria will be replaced. Anything that is still good will be sand blasted, powder coated and rehabilitated,” Commssioner Diana Biddle said last week.

“When it gets here, after it’s all assembled, then the final color will go on.”

The bridges will be painted an autumn red similar to the bridge on the Clear Creek Trail in Bloomington.

The overall goal is to have this phase of the trail completed by the end of next year.

The bridges will have concrete decks with wood rails that would allow for an ambulance to use it if needed, Magner said.

“The trail cannot handle truck traffic. At worst case an ambulance could get across it, but no construction type (trucks),” he said.

The 3-mile-long Salt Creek Trail project started with route planning in October 2002. The first three-quarter-mile paved section, between the Brown County YMCA and Nashville CVS, opened in the fall of 2013.

A Salt Creek Trail Committee of local people was formed before the project became a county project with the involvement of INDOT and the DNR, which offered the Clay County bridges. The county then had to sign off as the recipient.

Easements have not been secured for the middle phase of the trail, which would connect Parkview Road with the YMCA.

“It’s one piece of a puzzle at a time,” Biddle said last week of the middle phase.

“Options are open (for possible paths), we’re not locked into anything for that phase. We’re open to any options.”

Completing the middle phase of the trail is not being actively pursued right now. Biddle said that once bridges from Clay County are here and are installed then focus will shift to completing the middle phase and finding a path for it.

The funding has been secured for all phases of the trail though. A trail committee is not in place currently because there is nothing for them to do at this time, Magner said.

Other trail updates

At the Sept. 18 meeting Magner said he was working with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management on completing a follow-up inspection related to the construction permit for the YMCA phase of the trail.

“You had to make sure the trees that were planted survived for a minimum of two consecutive growing seasons through the summer,” he said of the follow-up inspection.

Paperwork for those inspections was sent to a former commissioner. Magner said his office received a letter from IDEM stating the county had not turned in the inspections. He then shared his contact information with IDEM to receive future letters.

“I sent them a letter of what we’re going to do, that we were going to start the plan and have it finished by the end of the year. They are great with that,” he said.

“We will develop an inspection of the plan to make sure what’s there met the original construction requirement for the permit and make sure the trees are still alive.”

Once that is complete the county will have to certify the inspection for 2020 and 2021 then in early 2022 IDEM will come down to do a final inspection before releasing the county from the construction permit.

“Then there’s no future paperwork after that,” Magner said.

Magner also reported that earlier in September he had received a letter from INDOT stating they finished their fifth year of construction audits for the first phase.

“They’ve accepted everything and there’s no other commitments to be made to phase one of the trail,” he said.