Utah, Navajo Nation officials break ground on $152M San Juan County road upgrade

MONTEZUMA CREEK, San Juan County — Utah and Navajo Nation representatives broke ground Tuesday on a $152 million road upgrade project in San Juan County that will benefit locals, visitors to area tourist sites and oil workers.

"It's been almost 20 years of hard work and collaboration between state and tribal leaders to get to today's groundbreaking," Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who took part in the ceremony, said in a Facebook post. A portion of the road section to be improved crosses Navajo Nation land.

Plans call for upgrades of 54 miles of parts of state Route 162 and S.R. 262, including the section of S.R.162 from Bluff east through Montezuma Creek to the Colorado state line. S.R. 262 will be improved from Montezuma Creek northwesterly to where it meets U.S. 191.

"This project will make travel safer, smoother and more convenient for the residents in the area; visitors traveling to Bears Ears, Four Corners and Hovenweep National Monument; and workers serving the petroleum extraction industry in the region," says a Utah Department of Transportation statement.

Around $48 million for the project is coming from a Nationally Significant Federal Lands and Tribal Projects grant, $79 million comes from another federal grant and $25 million is coming from state coffers, according to UDOT. Apart from improvements to the roadway surface, a roundabout will be built in Montezuma at the S.R. 162-S.R. 262 intersection and some of the shoulders and lanes will be widened, among many other things.

Work on the road section, dubbed the "energy corridor" by UDOT given its use by oil workers, is expected to be complete by the end of 2025.

Separately, Navajo Nation leaders have long pressed for support from Utah officials to build a new 38-mile road section to the remote Navajo Mountain area in the western portion of the Utah section of the reservation, so far to no avail.