DIXFIELD – Work is just getting started on one end of Route 2 in Gilead and just finishing on the other end in Oxford County.

Another month should do it for the section just beyond Morrison Hill, said Maine Department of Transportation regional engineer Mark Hume at Division 7 headquarters.

All that’s left, he said, is shoulder grading, driveway touchups and a last coat of pavement. The next section in Dixfield, from south of Holman Road to Canton Point Road, is to undergo highway improvements.

But the reworking of Route 2, which includes a relocation around the opposite side of Twin Rivers Lumber Yard from where the road is now, is in the design stage, Hume said. Construction on that part isn’t expected to begin until 2008.

On the other end of Route 2, Hume said MDOT decided to do four miles in Bethel and 1.5 miles in Gilead, rather than the mile-long section in between, which contains a mountain of ledge.

“They’re getting the most miles done that they can for the money,” Hume said of the $8.2 million project. “They figure that it’s better to get four miles done than one mile and save the hardest part for last.”

H.E. Sargent Inc. of Stillwater won the contract. The project is expected to be completed by Oct. 1, 2005.

Among the other Division 7 reconstruction projects this summer and fall are two miles on Route 4 in Farmington at a cost of $4.1 million; and 2.6 miles of Route 4 in Livermore for $4 million.

Advertising for the Livermore project is expected to occur in late July, with work to begin in September and continue into next year, Hume said.

Other projects include overlays, like 16.5 miles for $3.1 million on Route 2 from Rumford to Hanover, on Route 17 from Mexico to Roxbury, and on Route 5 in Rumford; and 2.7 miles in Woodstock on Route 26 for $600,000.

The Route 26 job, which is to start in July, begins two miles north of the West Paris-Woodstock line.

On June 23, a $5.5 million project is expected to go to bid to rehabilitate nine miles of Route 117 over Streaked Mountain. Work is expected to start in August.

In that project, the department intends to fix a sharp curve on a steep hill, by reducing the existing 17-percent grade to a 10-percent grade.

The MDOT is also expected to take out another bad corner, this one a $230,000 safety project in Minot on Jackson Hill.

Hume said Minot is to reconstruct the Jackson Hill Road from where the department work ends to the Auburn line. Auburn is to fix the other side, which is known as Youngs Corner Road.

“Once it is completed, the state is expected to take it over as a state road,” Hume said.

Among the bridge projects, the Canton bridge on Route 140 is expected to be finished and open for traffic in July; one on East B Hill Road in Upton is to be completed in October; work is to start on Route 196 in Lisbon to replace the bridge over Sabattus Stream; and Peru gets the 40-foot-long Arnold Bridge replaced over Spars Stream, and a large culvert installed on Worthley Pond Road.

T. Buck Construction of Auburn is expected to begin work on June 14 on a $600,000 project to replace the Bridge Street bridge over Pennesseewassee Stream in Norway, just off Route 117 in the downtown area.

And a snowmobile bridge is to be built parallel to Route 2 in Bethel over the Androscoggin River.

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