Maries County
Those county figures are high, and the country around them explains why
MSHA records 2 employees at the 5M Rock Quarry.
Those numbers are among the steepest in the state.
The restriction rates run high right across it: Camden 17.9%, Miller 21.9%, Morgan 22.0%, Hickory 28.6%, Osage 29.2% and Maries 33.3%.
Valleys that deep need many small bridges. And the lake removes crossings from what is left, so the roads that remain carry more of the load and more of them end up rated.
The contrast next door makes the point. Cole County, immediately beside this group, restricts 1.0% of what it maintains. The difference is terrain, not maintenance, and a truck that has worked out of this county has been routed around rated crossings as a matter of course.
Farm trucks and grain hauls off the ridge ground. Around the 5M Rock Quarry — two people on the MSHA roll — and across a Maries County that rates 33.3% of its own structures below legal loads, this country turns over a steady amount of it.
- 8 of the 24 structures Maries County maintains are rated below legal loads, so routing rather than loading is usually what shaped the miles on it.
Around the 5M Rock Quarry, and across the river hills of Maries County, there is usually one sitting.