{"id":22400,"date":"2025-05-05T19:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-road-bridge-superintendent-retires\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:13:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:13:48","slug":"montezuma-county-road-bridge-superintendent-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-road-bridge-superintendent-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County Road & Bridge superintendent retires"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rob
Rob Englehart. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

After 11 years as Montezuma County\u2019s Road and Bridge superintendent, Rob Englehart has retired. His last day was Friday, May 2.<\/p>\n

And even though he tried to leave quietly and make no fuss, he agreed to speak to The Journal<\/em> and share highlights of his time with the county.<\/p>\n

He said, of retirement, \u201cI\u2019ve got plenty to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI live on a small farm. I\u2019ll get to spend more time with my kids and grandkids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And although he won\u2019t \u201csit around and die\u201d in his newfound free time, he\u2019ll miss \u201cgetting up and getting something accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took this business from something of a routine to \u2018Let\u2019s get things done and make the county better,\u2019\u201d he said, referring to the Road and Bridge crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of accomplishment here now \u2026 it\u2019s more \u2018us\u2019 than \u2018me.\u2019 Everything we\u2019ve done around here, we did it, not me,\u201d said Englehart.<\/p>\n

He attributed the department\u2019s drive to big projects they had going, like rebuilding the county\u2019s truck routes, a roughly $7 million project.<\/p>\n

Grants from the Department of Local Affairs covered $3 million of that \u2013 \u201cI could thank DOLA again and again\u201d \u2013 and the county covered the rest \u201cin-kind,\u201d with its labor and materials.<\/p>\n

Projects like that, he said, accounted for 40% of the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be boring if all we did here was maintenance,\u201d he said. \u201cWe built new roads, tore up the old ones and rebuilt them. \u2026 I think my crew liked that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 11 years with the county, the department paved 73 miles of asphalt.<\/p>\n

It also fixed erosion problems on Road G, built the Alkali Creek bridge on Road N, hauled a whole lot of gravel, streamlined snowplow routes and established a positive working relationship with the U.S. Forest Service, another aspect of the job he\u2019ll miss.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always had strong revenue and support from the community and commissioners,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m happy to leave with the road department fiscally sound \u2013 we\u2019ve never been in the red. We could take cuts and still make things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

It helps, too, that Montezuma County is \u201crich with resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other counties, he said, are \u201cenvious of us\u201d since we\u2019re able to make our own gravel and chips.<\/p>\n

Mid-May, the county will be conducting interviews to fill Englehart\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

To whoever secures the job, Englehart advised them to \u201ctake the good days with the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working for the county, you answer to 26,000 bosses, he said, so \u201cPR can be hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t let people get you down, but don\u2019t get too high, either. They\u2019ll shove you back down,\u201d he laughed. \u201cStay in the middle and do the best you can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He\u2019s been working in construction since he graduated in 1975<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77695,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22400\/revisions\/77695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22400"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}