Gary Yarborough struggles each time he needs to leave his home to drive anywhere. The road he lives on has deep holes and ruts which have caused a great deal of damage to the road’s residents.
Yarborough bought the property in 1995, putting a home for his family on the lot in the woods. Durant Road is directly across from Alex Harvin Landing on Highway 260. A short distance down Durant, a dirt road cuts back through the woods, leading to Yarborough’s and other residents’ homes.
When he first moved there, only one other family lived there. As time went by, more families moved in, and the original owner of the land would smooth out the dirt road for the new families. However, more families meant more traffic regularly ran over the road.
By a few years after he moved in, the road was beginning to have issues. Yarborough contacted the county with a request for it to be paved. He was told until the county put up a stop sign where the road enters Durant, the county would not maintain the road.
In the early 2000s, the county changed the road signs from route numbers to street names. The county put up a green county street sign, naming the road Sullivan Drive, and they placed a stop sign at the end of the drive.
Yarborough contacted the county again and spoke to a Mr. Hilton, who then worked for the county. Hilton told Yarborough if he would get signatures from the residents giving him permission, Hilton would grade the road a couple of times a year as he came by for other maintenance.
Yarborough went to every family and got the signed permissions from each. However, the county did not follow through.
“I got the permissions, and nothing happened,” said Yarborough.
Years went by and the road worsened. Around 2010, the home of the other gentleman who lived there in 1995 caught fire.
“The fire trucks complained that they almost broke a spring on the truck trying to get to his house to keep it from burning,” said Yarborough.
By 2012, the postal service refused to come down the road to deliver mail. All residents had to place their mailboxes out on Durant road.
“One postal lady drove a jeep, and it bottomed out on the road and broke her transmission line. She didn’t even make it all the way down the road,” said Yarborough.
Yarborough occasionally receives certified mail, and the postal service would place “sorry we missed you” notices in his box rather than deliver the certified article. This meant Yarborough had to make a 26-mile round trip to get his mail due to the condition of his road.
Yarborough began contacting the county again in 2012, asking them to do something about the road, and the postal service also contacted the county on the Sullivan Drive residents’ behalf. Since that time, Yarborough knows of at least one other time the postal service has reached out to the county about Sullivan Drive. Again to no avail.
About that same time, a new woman began working for the county. Yarborough spoke to her and explained about the long process he’d gone through with regard to broken promises from the county about paving Sullivan Drive.
However, the woman told Yarborough the laws had changed, and the county didn’t maintain roads any longer. He explained it was a county road, but she stated it was a private road. When Yarborough told her there was a green street sign, denoting a county road, on Sullivan Drive, she agreed to send someone out to check it.
Someone from the county did come, but rather than pave the road, the green county sign was removed, and it was replaced with a brown street sign, showing it as a private road.
According to Yarborough, the road has been there for over 50 years. However, county GIS maps show the road runs through the private property of multiple homeowners who live on the road.
Even with this hurdle, Yarborough presses on. He feels confident the residents would gladly deed over the strip of land which contains the road if the county would agree to upkeep the road.
Most recently, Yarborough, who is disabled, was told if he used medical services to get to his medical appointments, the county would pave the road. While Medicare would likely cover this expense, after his death, his family might be required to pay back those expenses to Medicare.
“I told them I’m disabled, but I can still drive. I don’t see the sense in using the ambulance service to go to the doctor, just to get them to fix the road,” said Yarborough. “We all pay taxes, and I just don’t see why they can’t come do something.”
The road continues to worsen, causing damage to residents’ vehicles. Often, they drive through one resident’s front yard to avoid portions of the road.
“My wife’s car is torn up. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to have my truck realigned. My daughter’s car is in awful shape,” said Yarborough. “My neighbor’s front wheel folded under and came off.”
As the families on Sullivan Road are not wealthy, they do not have the joint funds to pay a contractor to pave the road. Instead, the families are now hoping to find a resident, business or group of residents or businesses willing to donate crush to put on the road. While not a permanent solution, it would stop the damage for now. It would buy time to continue to work with the county toward a solution, which Yarborough still hopes will come.
If someone is interested in helping with the paving process, please call Yarborough at (803) 460-2742.
“I’m just trying anything to get something done with this road,” said Yarborough, who has been fighting to get the road paved for almost 25 years, since long before the laws changed. He and the other residents have complied with each step the county required, yet nothing has come from the efforts.
“I was told they would fix the road when these things happened, and I feel like they should honor that now, even though they’ve changed the laws, because they told me they would do this,” said Yarborough. “We did all we were asked to do, and I just feel we should be grandfathered in.”
