US Route 89 is one of the West’s most scenic highways. It reaches from Mexico to Canada and is known as the “National Park Highway.” With over 1,600 miles of a mostly two-lane paved highway, US 89 passes through five states, many cities and towns, and it is the gateway to seven national parks and 14 national monuments.

Hales Sand & Gravel, a DBA company of Staker Parson Materials & Construction, worked with Coughlin Company and UDOT Region 4 on a 12.9-mile section of US 89 north of Fairview, Utah. The project used 26,978 tons of SMA asphalt. The work included using Cold In-place Recycling (CIR) for 7.75 miles of the total project. Since CIR is a newer process for many UDOT employees, this project allowed them to watch and learn about it.

Before processing the CIR, Hales Sand and Gravel and Coughlin Company removed the top 1.5 inches of the existing asphalt, consisting mostly of chip and crack seal. Sanpete County accepted the removed material as a product they could use as patching or shouldering material.

Coughlin processed CIR each day, and the Hales Sand & Gravel paving crew would lay and roll the exposed underlined material. The mill hit the project’s north end on the fourth production day, and production was limited to only 1.45 miles. With a requirement to implement the appropriate traffic control, UDOT permitted having the forward mills flip around.

The team shouldered ten miles of road and paved five miles with a 0.5-inch-thick lane level and a 1.5-inch SMA overlay. After the team finished the first five miles of lane leveling, they installed a two inch SMA overlay on 7.75 miles of road.