Paving Season: 2025 Edition

In case you missed it, paving season began last week and finished yesterday, August 12.

Last week, you may have seen work suddenly start and wondered why there was little or last-minute notice. Here are a few reasons:

The City of Elkins relies on a paving contractor to resurface its streets. Not-so-fun-fact: There are few paving companies in West Virginia and Elkins uses the same contractors as the Department of Highways (DOH). Those same contractors usually prioritize their much larger DOH highway contracts; when they have capacity, they’ll then review the projects that smaller cities like Elkins had requested.

Further, a commitment to pave Elkins’ streets may suddenly be rescheduled weeks ahead of time, or a few weeks after the Operations Department’s original requested date. For example, some paving projects that launched this week were originally scheduled for September. It’s safe to assume that the paving contractor glanced at this week’s weather forecast, saw the optimal paving conditions, had capacity, and then decided to knock some smaller paving projects off their to-do lists.

Paving and re-paving can only occur a few months during the year. Two factors drive this reality. First, contractors only mix hot-mix asphalt (HMA) when the weather is warm enough. If the weather suddenly cools, all paving must stop as cooler weather, not to mention rain, will ruin the asphalt. The second factor is demand: If West Virginia’s paving contractors have a large influx of paving requests, then they will work with asphalt plants to ensure that enough HMA is produced for their larger projects. Should any asphalt be left over, smaller communities like Elkins will receive a call notifying us that any streets needing paving can be completed sooner instead of later.

It’s not too different from how your dentist or medical specialist schedules their patients. Your dentist may not have had time to see you until September or October, but after some cancellations, they will phone you as suddenly, they can see you: NOW. Our operations department is facing a comparable situation.

As of Tuesday, August 12, paving crews have completed this season’s work in Elkins.

Since we received the call from our contractors the week of August 4, paving has occurred on:

• 300 Edgewater from Georgetown to the first intersection
• Sylvester Ave. from Blaine Ave. west
• West Central from Wilmoth to Vernon
• Lough St. from Harrison Ave to West Central
• Riverview from Edgewater to Conaway
• South Davis Ave. at Blaine Ave
• 15th Street by the Bus Garage
• 13th Street from S. Henry to Cole Ave.
• South Davis Avenue at Blaine Ave.
• Davis Ave. in front of City Hall (from 4th to 5th Streets)
• Cole Ave. from 13th to the train trestle
• 13th Street from S. Henry to Cole
• Bell, Paul and Howell from Diamond Street to the Mountain School, starting approximately 7:30 to 8:00 a.m.
• Then, Davis Avenue from 4th Street to 5th Street.

Visit this page to learn more about how paving works in Elkins.

The City expects more paving to occur through the week of August 11. For more updates, check our Facebook page or this alert we set up on our website.