Central City Street Department

About Central City Street Department

Before the coffee shops on the courthouse square switch on their lights, the plow trucks of the Central City Street Department are already working the grid, opening 17th Avenue and the numbered cross streets in turn. Merrick County's seat spreads out low and flat along Highway 30, where a single overnight system can bury the whole town and the wind keeps drifting the same corners shut for days after. The routes run past the courthouse, the school, and out to where the last houses give way to cornfields and grain bins, since every resident depends on a road scraped down to the pavement. Sand and salt get laid down first on the hill by the Merrick County Fairgrounds and the low crossing at Center Street, where ice tends to form fastest, and the crews circle back through those same spots all night if the snow keeps falling. It's unglamorous work, clearing the same grid over and over until a town wakes up to bare asphalt instead of a foot of drift.