Morongo Valley residents come together to repair their roads thanks to non-profit group and community fundraising

Bad roads tend to be one challenging aspect of living in the otherwise beautiful hi-desert, especially in our unincorporated rural areas where county maintenance isn’t guaranteed. A group of Morongo Valley neighbors recently took matters into their own hands to smooth out their roads in a collective effort after attempting to create a special roads district through the area. Reporter Gabriel Hart spoke to Daniel Polk who spearheaded the recent road repair on Navajo Trail, with guidance from Bradley Garrett of the Rawson Road Improvement group who also recently gave Rawson Road its first of many repairs. 

Last February, the Rawson Road Improvement group spoke to Z1077 after efforts to form a special roads district through San Bernardino County fell apart. Rawson Road Improvement board Treasurer Bradley Garrett stated that the county “botched the job” miscalculating parcels, which drove up estimates each resident would have to pay to have the county maintain their roads. 

However, the non-profit group decided to remain intact and be available for “smaller ad-hoc repairs” on a case-by-case basis, and last month Navajo Trail “Road Captain” Daniel Polk decided it was time to address their road, one of the worst in Morongo Valley. They decided to solely use “road base,” a combination of crushed stone, sand, and dust that distributes evenly, ensures stability, and provides drainage to prevent shifting. Road base is quite literally the next best thing to asphalt, since that’s what goes down first when properly paving a road.

“The nonprofit had some funding from what neighbors had donated in the past year or so. They gave Navajo some of that money, about like $725, enough for one load of road base, and then we decided we’d raise enough money for two more truck loads for three total… Three loads were enough to patch the worst spots on the upper third of Navajo, about 1000 feet. Once we get a heavy rain, that’ll be the real test, but so far, I am pleasantly surprised,” said Polk.

Polk reached out to select neighbors on Navajo he knew personally, and soon they had more than enough to cover their section of the notoriously wrecked road. Neighbors also contributed labor and equipment: a tractor to smooth out the base, and a “water buffalo” they rented to spray onto the base after it was poured to activate the sediment. Polk said once a couple other neighbors from lower Navajo saw what was happening, they also expressed interest, but it would take the same collective effort upper Navajo put forth. 

“The hope is that we find more neighbors on the lower end of Navajo, hopefully by some more truckloads (of base) and patch the rest of the road,” said Polk

Last week, Rawson Road Improvement Secretary Bradley Garrett and President Sally Ellis began putting base down on the most problematic sections of Rawson, a much larger road that Garrett is crossing his fingers will have the same luck as Navajo. With their own money, Garrett and Ellis brought a backhoe tractor to spread the base to accompany Ellis’ Skid Steer to condense the base into the potholes. He said they had just enough left in the original fund to cover another three truckloads of base and are waiting on a check from Third District Supervisor Dawn Rowe to cover the rest. 

“Dawn Rowe is chipping in another $5000 grand, it’s amazing. We had a meeting with the county, and you know there were discrepancies with the materials going down, the cost going up, and then the real clincher was the survey cards and the letters that they sent out where the numbers didn’t even match. So once we raised that with the supervisor’s office, they were more willing to help. They said, “This could have been handled better,” and they want to keep the conversation going with the county, maybe refining the scope of work. I think maybe we go back to them and say, ‘Why don’t you guys just bring in road base?’ Forget about digging it up, guttering everything, and tearing up the asphalt you know? Just bring in base and maybe we can get this cost down to something that people are comfortable with,” said Garrett. 

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