Dirt Road Repair and Maintenance

Learn about these low-tech solutions for road maintenance on your dirt road.

By Hollis Walker
Updated on January 31, 2024
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by GRIT staff
This swampy lagoon of a road demonstrates the most common problem in maintaining rural roads — drainage.

Hollis Walker shares low-tech dirt road repair and maintenance solutions to help keep your driveway and roads in good shape.

Most of the time, living on a country road feels almost like heaven, as John Denver sang. But when your darling dirt road turns to mud soup after a rain or your ditches overflow into your fields, living on a country road can feel more like being stuck in purgatory.

If it’s a public road you live on, you may be literally stuck — at least until the government road grader bails you out. But if you own the road or share ownership of a road with your neighbors and feel you’re forever struggling to keep it passable, take heart: There are solutions for road maintenance on your dirt road.

In some parts of the country, road improvement is no longer optional. Wildfires that scorched the West have emphasized the need for better road access for firefighting equipment; new ordinances are mandating wider roads with better turnarounds. Environmental studies show that much freshwater pollution and soil erosion is caused by unchecked runoff from dirt roads, prompting calls for improved road construction and drainage on private as well as public byways.

You may be thinking, “Right. But I can’t afford to fix the road.”

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