WSDOT Reopens Sedgwick Road in Port Orchard Ahead of Schedule Following Salmonberry Creek Bridge Installation

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. — State Route 160, known locally across South Kitsap as Sedgwick Road, reopened to all motor vehicle traffic at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 3, 2026. The milestone concluded a continuous 112-day highway closure that severed direct transit between Port Orchard and the Southworth ferry terminal throughout the summer. Contractor crews working under the Washington State Department of Transportation completed installation of a new 25-foot concrete buried bridge structure across Salmonberry Creek weeks ahead of the agency original late-October forecast.

The reopening restores the primary east-west arterial for thousands of regional commuters, commercial freight haulers, and emergency service vehicles. Since June 13, 2026, travel along the busy two-lane highway was barricaded between Blackberry Hill Lane Southeast and Long Lake Road Southeast. State transport officials authorized the total roadway shutdown to accelerate deep excavation work, replace a fish-blocking metal culvert, and minimize long-term disruptions to adjacent wetlands and residential neighborhoods. With primary paving and striping completed over the weekend, passenger cars, transit buses, and heavy commercial vehicles resumed direct travel across the newly constructed bridge span.

Early Reopening at Salmonberry Creek Ends 110-Day Highway Closure

The early completion of the Sedgwick Road roadway segment represents an uncommon scheduling victory for South Kitsap drivers who endured four months of congestion along rural diversion routes. State Route 160 serves as the primary transportation spine linking State Route 16 with the Washington State Ferries terminal at Southworth. When WSDOT enacted the full closure in mid-June, regional transportation planners projected that structural installation, utility relocation, and roadway reconstruction would extend through the final days of October.

General contractor Ceccanti, Inc. accelerated structural backfilling and deep utility work following the placement of primary concrete bridge footings in late August. Extended dry weather through late September proved critical, allowing paving subcontractors to lay asphalt base courses, drainage channels, and wear layers without weather delays. State quality-assurance inspectors completed comprehensive load-bearing and alignment verifications early Saturday afternoon, clearing engineers to remove detour signage and reopen both travel lanes three weeks ahead of the contractual deadline.

While vehicle lanes are fully operational, WSDOT confirmed that drivers will encounter brief intermittent shoulder closures and temporary daytime flagging over the next several weeks. Work crews remain on site to complete roadside grading, install permanent crash barriers, and place native riparian plantings along disturbed embankments. Transportation officials emphasized that these finishing operations will occur strictly during off-peak daytime hours between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., avoiding overnight closures or commuter disruptions.

Engineering the 25-Foot Buried Bridge Over Salmonberry Creek

The physical transformation beneath Sedgwick Road eliminated an environmental bottleneck that choked Salmonberry Creek for more than five decades. The previous crossing relied on a 60-foot long, 48-inch diameter corrugated steel arch pipe installed beneath deep highway fill during initial road grading. The narrow metal pipe created severe hydraulic constraints, generating high water velocities during winter rainstorms and forming an impassable vertical drop at its downstream outlet that completely blocked migrating salmon.

Engineers designed the replacement structure as a 25-foot wide precast concrete buried bridge. This modern three-sided design spans the entire active channel width of Salmonberry Creek, allowing water to flow at natural stream velocities without artificial constriction. By utilizing an open-bottom structural arch rather than a closed pipe, the design preserves a natural gravel and cobble stream bed that mimics undisturbed riparian corridors found throughout the Kitsap Peninsula.

Heavy machinery excavated more than 6,000 cubic yards of highway embankment fill to expose the underlying stream bed and dismantle the corroded pipe. Specialized mobile cranes lowered precast concrete footing segments and arch components into exact position along reinforced foundations. Heavy riprap scour protection was placed along structural abutments to withstand severe regional flood stages, while engineered streambed sediment featuring diverse gravel grades was carefully distributed across the channel floor. This specialized aggregate matrix provides structural stability during peak stormwater flows while establishing ideal resting pools and gravel bars for spawning salmonids.

Relief for Southworth Ferry Commuters and Local Detour Routes

The restoration of direct highway access resolves four months of acute neighborhood friction across unincorporated South Kitsap. During the 112-day detour, approximately 12,000 daily vehicles were diverted off State Route 160 onto narrow residential roads surrounding Long Lake. Commuters bound for the Southworth-Fauntleroy ferry route navigated lengthy bypasses along Jackson Avenue Southeast, Southeast Salmonberry Road, and Long Lake Road Southeast, adding 15 to 25 minutes to routine morning trips.

The influx of heavy traffic onto two-lane county roadways lacking paved shoulders generated chronic morning backups and accelerated local pavement wear. Residents along the detour route reported hazardous blind curves and extended delays exiting private driveways, while Kitsap Transit altered rural bus routes to manage bottlenecked intersections. Delivery carriers, freight transports, and regional postal couriers also encountered schedule disruptions while circumnavigating rural secondary corridors. Cyclists and pedestrians faced a separate, circuitous detour encompassing Phillips Road Southeast and Lakeview Drive Southeast to safely avoid active construction staging zones.

Local business owners clustered near Bethel Road and Long Lake expressed immediate relief as normal commercial traffic resumed. Service stations, convenience stores, and roadside farm stands had reported significant revenue declines during the summer as through-drivers actively avoided the entire Southworth corridor. South Kitsap Fire and Rescue units also regained direct emergency response routing along the Sedgwick corridor, eliminating critical minutes previously lost when fire engines and paramedic ambulances had to navigate winding lakeside detours during emergency calls.

Federal Injunction Mandates Drive Western Washington Fish Passage Investments

The construction at Salmonberry Creek is part of an ongoing statewide initiative governed by binding federal civil rights mandates rather than discretionary highway upgrades. In 2013, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a permanent injunction directing the state to remove barrier culverts that violate tribal treaty fishing rights. The landmark ruling, rooted in nineteenth-century treaties and affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, ordered Washington to restore fish passage across western Washington watersheds.

Under the federal decree, WSDOT must correct hundreds of state-owned culverts that block significant salmon habitat across Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula. Outdated culverts built during twentieth-century highway construction systematically fractured stream networks, contributing to severe population collapses among native chinook, coho, and chum salmon, as well as sea-run cutthroat and steelhead trout. State lawmakers have appropriated billions of dollars in specialized transportation packages to keep pace with court-ordered completion targets.

Salmonberry Creek represents an essential spawning and rearing tributary within the broader Curley Creek watershed, which discharges into marine waters at Yukon Harbor near Southworth. Reopening this highway crossing reconnects lowland saltwater estuaries with productive upstream wetlands and cold-water gravel beds. Fisheries biologists project that eliminating the steep velocity drop will allow immediate upstream migration for adult coho and chum salmon, expanding wild nursery habitat critical to sustaining regional orca food chains.

Blackjack Creek and Salmonberry Creek Share $56.7 Million Restoration Budget

The Sedgwick Road bridge replacement was funded and procured under a unified $56.7 million design-bid-build capital contract managed by the WSDOT Olympic Region Project Office. Awarded to Tacoma-based Ceccanti, Inc. in July 2023, the capital package combined the Salmonberry Creek crossing with an even larger fish passage overhaul at nearby Blackjack Creek along State Route 16 in Port Orchard.

Grouping the two Kitsap County barrier corrections under a single general contractor allowed state engineers to achieve substantial procurement efficiencies and shared construction oversight. At the Blackjack Creek site, construction crews replaced three undersized eight-foot by nine-foot concrete box culverts beneath Highway 16 with two massive 80-foot long highway bridges. That complex phase required multi-stage traffic shifts into highway medians across 2024 and 2025 to keep high-speed regional expressway lanes open during foundation drilling and girder placement.

By coordinating both project sites under one administrative structure, project managers balanced heavy equipment and specialized trade crews across both South Kitsap watersheds. Heavy pile-driving equipment and concrete delivery convoys transitioned seamlessly between Blackjack Creek and Salmonberry Creek as construction sequencing dictated. The combined contract integrates state gas tax allocations, federal highway formula grants, and specialized environmental remediation reserves. Funding covers preliminary engineering, environmental permitting, utility easements, structural fabrication, road surfacing, and mandatory multi-year ecological monitoring to ensure the newly constructed channels meet federal velocity and gravel-depth standards.

Summer 2027 In-Stream Restoration and Final Planting Calendar

While motor vehicles have returned to the Sedgwick Road corridor, ecological construction across Salmonberry Creek will continue into next year. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife regulations strictly limit construction activities within flowing salmon streams to narrow hydraulic windows, typically between mid-July and early autumn when adult spawners and juvenile salmonids are least vulnerable to suspended sediment plumes and heavy equipment vibrations.

State biologists and engineering teams scheduled the secondary phase of in-channel construction for August 2027. During that regulated window, environmental crews will re-enter the stream bed beneath the new bridge structure to extract buried remnants of the legacy culvert, install complex root wads and log structures to anchor banks, and sculpt natural gravel pool-and-riffle sequences along the creek alignment to maximize resting habitat for juvenile fish.

Throughout the upcoming winter and spring seasons, restoration specialists will plant thousands of native trees, shrubs, and groundcovers along the highway right-of-way. Species including western red cedar, Sitka spruce, red alder, salmonberry, and sword fern will establish deep root networks to prevent slope erosion and provide shade over the open creek channel. The establishment of mature canopy cover will help regulate seasonal water temperatures, preventing summer thermal spikes and ensuring Salmonberry Creek provides cool, oxygenated habitat vital for sustained salmon reproduction across coming decades. WSDOT environmental compliance monitors will conduct annual vegetation survival and stream morphology surveys through 2030 to confirm that the restored riparian buffer meets strict state and tribal restoration standards.