The roads in Deschutes County are maintained with funds from state motor vehicle revenue (gas tax, vehicle registration, and truck tax) and federal forest receipts from timber sales in the Deschutes National Forest. These funds are dedicated for expenditure on roads and restricted by state law to use only on those roads that have been established by the Board of County Commissioners as "County Roads." The Road Department maintains over 800 miles of County Roads in rural Deschutes County. There are an additional 1000 miles of roads in rural Deschutes County that are dedicated to the public (the general public has the right to drive on them) but are not maintained by any government jurisdiction. These roads, known as "local access roads", are the maintenance responsibility of the abutting property owners. Deschutes County's rapid growth has resulted in a dramatic increase in traffic on local access roads, creating a large maintenance problem for the property owners. Unfortunately, the County's limited resources do not provide adequate funding to improve or maintain these local access roads. Property owners have several options available to maintain or improve their local access road:

Informally collect money from the area residents and hire a contractor to perform road maintenance
Form a Special Road District to tax area residents for road maintenance
Improve the roads to county standards for acceptance into the county road system. The county would then take over the responsibility for all future maintenance. These improvements can be done independently by the area residents or through the formation of a Local Improvement District. Please refer to the Local Improvement District page for more information.

Winter Activites

During a County-wide snowstorm, there is in excess of 1,500 lane miles to be cleared of snow in order to maintain traffic. Fortunately, not all storms are County-wide and vary as to locations and intensity. The County has established a list of specific routes to be plowed/sanded in priority order in the Snow and Ice Plan. It is the goal of Deschutes County, within available resources, to respond in a reasonable manner to snowy and icy County roads to allow vehicle travel by motorists. During these conditions motorists must exercising due care in the operation of a motor vehicle. It is not the purpose of this plan to assure the safe operation of vehicles upon County roads. For more information please veiw the Snow & Ice Frequently Asked Questions.