The maintenance team from the King County Road Services Division received the prestigious Spellman Award from King County Executive Ron Sims, right.

On May 17, eight employees from the Maintenance Section of the King County Road Services Division were honored for their efforts to preserve the history of King County.

The group received the prestigious John D. Spellman Award for Exemplary Achievement in Historic Preservation from King County Executive Ron Sims. It is the first time in the history of the Spellman Awards that a county agency has received it.

“Every year we receive many deserving nominees for the Spellman Award,” said Sims. “Each nomination captures the tremendous efforts that the people of King County have put into historic preservation projects in their communities. These awards celebrate our past as well as our future.”

The Road employees were cited for their ongoing efforts to preserve important historic sites in the county that they encounter during their normal course of duties.

In the fall of 2002, Fennelle Miller, the Department of Transportation's staff archaeologist, began offering cultural resources training to various work groups within DOT. Miller works with the employees on how to be more aware of the history of the areas they are working in. She also teaches them how to avoid disturbing historically and archaeologically significant areas, and to identify places that could have undiscovered cultural resources or historic importance.

Miller said maintenance workers have been particularly attentive to her lessons.

“Since they received cultural resources training in November 2002 and January and February 2003, the King County Roads Maintenance Group has been consistently proactive in cultural resources stewardship,” she said. “They have been solely responsible for identifying six new sites.”

Those sites include historic buildings and roads, as well as one ancient archaeological area associated with Native American history.

The Roads maintenance employees cited for their successful efforts to identify and protect archaeological and historic resources in the field are: Jon Cassidy, Mary Christensen, Will Fogelberg, Rob Fritz, Jay Fulwider, Jeff Granlund, Nate McClain and Mike O'Neill.

Sims praised the group for going above and beyond the scope of their daily duties. He said it highlights the importance of the work accomplished by the entire Maintenance Section.

“In none of these cases was there a law that required these employees to identify these cultural resources. These folks did it because they have become conscientious stewards of our county's disappearing heritage,” said Sims. “Through their efforts, these resources have been identified and documented.”

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Next week, the King County Road Services Division will begin work on a seismic upgrade of the Duvall Bridge. Since most of the work will occur underneath the bridge, the county does not expect any full road or bridge closures.

The bridge is located on Woodinville-Duvall Road, just west of the town of Duvall, and carries more than 17,000 vehicles a day over the Snoqualmie River. It was originally built in 1951, and is seismically vulnerable due to weak pier columns and foundations.

The upcoming retrofit will include: installing drilled shafts; strengthening pier walls; extending bearing seats; repairing bearing devices; and installing seismic restrainers. The estimated cost for the project is $2.3 million, and work is expected to last about four months.

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