At long last, solution found to fix Beaver Dam Road

The question over which state was responsible for the long decaying Beaver Dam Road, which starts in Delaware and loops into Pennsylvania, has been answered.

As bureaucratic confusion over who was responsible for the winding enigma lingered for years, it fell sorely into disrepair and became a deeply potholed hazard to motorists.

“It’s a road that has destroyed a lot of rims and caused a lot of flat tires,” said State Rep. Dennis E. Williams (D-Brandywine Hundred), one of the legislators who worked on the dilemma. “We’ve been lucky, though, that no one ever lost control and went into the creek that borders the road.”

However, the longtime headache for drivers along the Delaware-Pennsylvania state line has been fixed thanks to a joint agreement between the Delaware and Pennsylvania transportation departments, said Patrick Jackson, communications director for the Senate Majority Caucus.

Construction began Monday, June 21 and was nearing a close on Wednesday, June 30.

Under the deal, PennDOT is taking title to Beaver Dam Road. It hired Allan A. Myers Inc. to repave a badly deteriorated section of the road in Pennsylvania while DelDOT has agreed to assume maintenance responsibility for the road.

When the road was built during the 1800s it was located entirely in Pennsylvania because of a surveying error that set the Delaware-Pennsylvania line too far south, Jackson said. When the state lines were resurveyed and corrected in the 1900s, the ends of the road were in the Diamond State, but a section of the road looped into the Keystone State.

Beaver Dam Road branches off Creek Road in a northeastern direction in Brandywine Hundred to form an arc, with the quarter-mile crest in southeastern Pennsylvania. Then, it winds its way back down to Delaware in a southeast direction and becomes Beaver Valley Road, stretching down one mile to overlap with part of Route 92, ending at Concord Pike.

PennDOT is spending about $200,000 to rebuild the road where it loops through Pennsylvania, PennDOT District Executive Les Toaso said. Construction is expected to last until July 5, weather permitting.

Under the joint agreement, DelDOT will assume responsibility for maintenance chores, such as snow plowing the road and fixing potholes, Jackson said.

State Sen. Michael Katz (D-Centreville) has been working on getting the road fixed since he took office last year. And it took some work, including reaching out to both Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Delaware Gov. Jack Markell.

Katz also reached out to Williams, whose district includes the road, and to their legislative colleagues over the state line, Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Chester) and Pa. State Rep. Stephen Barrar (R-Boothwyn) whose help was necessary to persuade PennDOT to take control of the road from Chadds Ford Township.

“This has been a complicated issue … but I’m grateful to the cooperation of our highway departments, my legislative colleagues in Pennsylvania, here in Delaware and governors Jack Markell and Ed Rendell in helping me get this problem resolved,” Katz said. “This is an example of people coming together state-to-state and aisle-to-aisle.”

PennDOT’s Toaso credited the lawmakers for their efforts to address the ills of the “orphan road.”

“It’s something we’ve been talking about with DelDOT and Chadds Ford Township for years, but we hadn’t been able to get anywhere until now,” he said. “But when this is done, people will have a much safer road.”