Getting Answers: Sheriff Mill Rd Bridge

PICKENS COUNTY, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - We’re working to get you answers on your Upstate road concerns.

We are taking a look at a bridge on Sheriff Mill Road in Pickens County.

The bridge is on the main route to Easley High School.

With more houses being built and people moving to the area, we’ve gotten several submissions from neighbors concerned about how the bridge will handle the additional traffic.

“I just don’t know how much more traffic this road is gonna be able to handle. It was never designed for this type of traffic,” Easley resident, Ann Sheriff-Granger said.

Sheriff-Granger has lived on Sheriff Mill Road since it was simply tar and gravel.

“You could play on the road. The only people that came down this road was family. If a car came down this road you knew who it was,” Sheriff-Granger said.

Now, a new neighborhood just went up and developers are proposing another.

Kelsey writes in, “The proposed annexation on county property into the city of Easley is being fought to prevent 250-300 more homes from being built on Sheriff Mill Rd.”

Located in Pickens County near the Anderson County line, 5,600 cars take the one mile cut-through each day.

The road takes drivers from Pelzer Highway to Brushy Creek Road in Easley.

Sheriff-Granger is just one of the neighbors concerned about how the bridge will handle more cars.

“When I was in high school, which was 47 years ago, that bridge was redone and they took it out and put new pavement down, but they didn’t redo those poles,” Sheriff-Granger said.

South Carolina Department of Transportation said the bridge was built in 1975 and rated as satisfactory at the last inspection.

“I think it’s a real big safety issue. Somebody needs to be paying attention to all this development going on. There’s no infrastructure to support it and this is a prime example,” Sheriff-Granger said.

Assistant City Administrator, Tommy Holcombe said this area of Easley does have the infrastructure to handle more development.

“It’s roadways, which is a small part of infrastructure. We have good infrastructure. We have good water, good sewer, good power, all the other utilities, and that is all part of the infrastructure. The one piece of infrastructure is the roads. All of the problems appear to be state roads,” Holcombe said.

At this point, SCDOT does not have any upcoming projects planned for Sheriff Mill Road.

“The road system will work its way through the system with the state of South Carolina,” Holcombe said, “The state of South Carolina will not do nothing until there’s homes built there, and then they’ll start looking at stuff like that. That’s not just here. That’s anywhere.”

Do you have a concern about a road or bridge in the Upstate? Submit it here.

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