Bird's Eye Pass determined to not be county road

July was a very busy month for FBO Nate Messenger at the Hot Springs County Airport.

According to Messenger’s records, there were a total of 200 operations at the airport, including four air ambulances.

A Falcon 2000 jet had planned on overnighting in Thermopolis, but due to its size, 66 feet long with a wing span of 63 feet and a height of 23 feet, there was not hangar space large enough to accommodate the craft.

Although it was not able to stay here without a hangar, the ownder did fill the plane with 854 gallons of jet fuel.

All told, it was a great month for fuel at the airport, too, selling over 2,600 gallons of aviation fuel and over 2,400 gallons of jet fuel. That is a record month in fuel sales since the airport’s opening.

Several county residents were on hand at the commissioner’s meeting to talk about whether or not Bird’s Eye Pass Road is really a county road or not.

Looking at documents from 1906, easements that would have made it a county road were brought before the commissioners that year, however, they were rejected. The easements were brought back up again in 1920, but ultimately were not filed in the courthouse.

Obviously this has been a decades-long question, but the commissioners finally put it to rest, determining it would not be in the county’s best interest to build a road at taxpayer’s expense when there is no official record the county even has easements across the various properties.

Landowners in the area are quite happy with that determination as it now allows them to decide who may or may not cross their properties without the burden of a county road easement.

There are other roads in the county that are in the same strange position of “just hanging out there” according to Road and Bridge Superintendent Dave Schlager.

Schlager and County Planner Bo Bowman will be getting together to research all of those roads with no real records so everything can be cleaned up officially.

Maintenance Supervisor Anthony Fruciano informed the commissioners they have finally tracked down the issue with the sewer system at the courthouse.

For several months, the sewer was backing up about every six weeks. It has unfortunately become progressively worse with it backing up nine times in the last month.

With some help from Steve’s Plumbing and Heating, a camera was run down the line until they found the problem – what looks like a small section of the pipe that has collapsed in on itself that runs under the floor of the former commissioners meeting room in the basement.

They are going to have to jackhammer out a five-foot by five-foot section of the floor, dig down about three-feet to the pipe and replace the one-foot section.

There is a catch, though.

The former commissioner’s room is where all of the voting equipment is stored as it is the only room large enough to hold it all and still have limited access to prevent anyone tampering with the machines.

So, they are going to have to wait to do the repair until after the primary election. In the meantime, Fruciano will be working with the county clerk to find other secure areas the equipment can be stored in temporarily.