FORT GIBSON — One of the heaviest traveled roads in Gene Wallace’s county commissioner district has also been one of the hardest to make suitable for traffic, he said.

His maintenance nightmare is about to become a dream come true for those who use the county road between Okay and Fort Gibson.

With school buses put in retirement for the summer and the spring rains stopped, work on paving Three Rivers Road should begin within a few days and be complete within a few weeks, Wallace said.

Getting the road paved would have been impossible if it weren’t for a lot of entities working together, Wallace said.

Muskogee and Wagoner counties are putting in the labor on the project. Sen. Dan Boren’s office worked with the state Department of Transportation to get about $330,000 in funding for the road, and the Cherokee Nation is putting in $120,000.

Add to that between $50,000 to $80,000 the town of Fort Gibson is spending in the Clinkenbeard Park area to make way for the new road and a bridge across the Grand River and you have a project made possible, Wallace said.

The bridge replacement has been approved, and the state is accumulating the $6 million for that project, Wallace said. Construction could begin next spring.

The Three Rivers Road, a 3.3-mile project, has been a long time in the making, Wallace said.

“This road has had a chronic lack of drainage, it’s too low, there are special soil conditions,” Wallace said. “It was almost impossible to maintain.”

Tons of fill material had to be hauled in and the road was raised three to four feet in some areas, he said.

Wagoner County has worked on its part of the road in its District 2, and work is expected to be completed today on building a detour around a small concrete bridge from Works Progress Administration days. The little old bridge will be ripped out and replaced with a wider concrete bridge that will straighten a curve in the road.

As soon as that work is complete and school is out, the paving machines should come in and finish the road, Wallace said.

The road will open up traffic to Fort Gibson and should have a positive impact on the town, said Mayor Steven Hill.

Don Garvin, district councilor for the Cherokee Nation, said the tribe got involved in the funding because the road will serve a lot of Cherokees who commute to Northeastern State University from the Okay area.

Reach Liz McMahan at 684-2926 or lmcmahan@muskogeephoenix.com.