PEACH COUNTY, Ga. — Growing up on a dirt road in Central Georgia can certainly have its downsides. It can get muddy and bumpy!
One Peach County woman and her elderly mother say the dirt road they've been living on for decades is affecting their lives - and it's driving them crazy!
13WMAZ’s Jessica Cha got down in the mud to see what they had to say.
Marsha Poole Yow first moved Gracewood Road in 1980 when she was 17-years-old. She says both ends of this road are now in bad shape.
On one end, Yow says that improved gravel was recently put in by the county, but without it, it would be about a foot drop from where the paved road and the dirt road meets.
The other side? Well, they say that it's just downright treacherous.
“Absolutely nothing has been done. My name is Marsha Poole Yow and Gracewood Drive is driving me crazy,” she says.
Yow says the exit to Gracewood Road, off of Highway 341, has been closed since 1997. One of the big reasons is because of a lake that sits between properties that overflows onto the road and has eroded the path away.
"I haven't been down that way in years,” she explains. “They decided to close it, rather than repair it."
Yow says there are road closed signs that have been put up for years, but folks who use GPS are taken through this route anyway.
"They’re like, ‘Well, it doesn’t look that bad. I’m gonna move the barrier,' and then they find out that, yes, it is that bad. However, it's too late for them to turn around. Somebody could wreck or get stuck,” Yow says.
The only other option out of Gracewood is through Norwood Springs Road on the other side. Yow says the county recently put gravel to help the steep drive up, but it's slowly washing away.
"My mother cannot go to doctors appointments because she can't stand to ride in the car over the bumps in the road,” she says.
Yow's 88 year-old-mother had one hip replaced and broke the other, and is currently bed-ridden. She says it's too painful for her mother to leave the house on their dirt road.
"She feels every bump in that road,” Yow says. “She hasn't gotten out of the house since last March, so it's essentially hard to get groceries-- hard to do anything. You can’t go to church even if you wanted to!”
Yow says her family used to maintain the road, scraping it and digging out the ditches. She says she and her brother are both disabled, and they just can’t do the work anymore.
Yow says County Commissioner Betty Hill, who represents this area, promised they'd look into the problem. However, after waiting 40 years, Yow still has no solution.
Hill declined to speak to us or to answer questions by text. Hill did say she would put the Gracewood Road issue on the agenda of their next County Commission meeting.
The meeting will be on Tuesday, March 14th at 6 p.m. at their office, located on 213 Person Street in Fort Valley.
Yow says she and her mother cannot attend due to the conditions of the road.