The Houlihans operate a business -- Alpenglow Skin Care -- from their home, but getting deliveries has become impossible due to the road's condition.

"Delivery drivers laugh when we give our address," Houlihan said.

With ruts more than 16 inches deep, damage to tires and vehicles happens frequently.

"There was a ditch that ran the whole width of the road and was a foot deep. It was abrupt, hard-core. If we hit that doing any more than two miles an hour, our vehicle was toast," Milburn said.

Nelson has a rental property in the area, but has given up trying to fill it.

"Right now I have a place for rent, but I'm not even putting an ad in paper. What's the point?" he said.

The road problems have existed for decades.

"When I moved up here I met an old homesteader and he had a letter he showed me from back in the '70s that he wrote to the Depaartment of Transportation, asking why they couldn't pave the road. As I recall, the reply was 'We can't pave the road. It would cost $50,000 a mile,'" Nelson said. "Now they've pegged it at $2 million."

After several days of dry weather, the mud is beginning to dry and the road is firming up. Getting stuck and needing the help of other drivers is less of a daily occurrence. Still, there are sections narrowed to one lane. Places where the ground springs beneath tires. Areas with little or no shoulder. Slow, cautious driving is required. It might "have some bad spots," but it's drivable, according to Carl High, DOT area superintendent.

"I was there Thursday (April 30) and drove the whole thing without a problem," High said.

Anchor Point Fire Chief Keith Sullivan also is keeping an eye on the road in the event he and his crew are called to an emergency situation. Right now it's passable, but that isn't saying much.

"It's in better shape this year than it was last year, but not too much," Sullivan said.

That's a long way from saying the road's in good condition.

"It's a dirt road. It's an old road. It never has been much for gravel on it," High said. "It needs complete reconstruction and realignment."

High's say-so won't make repairs or a rebuild happen, however. It takes the loud, persistent voice of everyone impacted by the road's deteriorating conditions falling on the appropriate ears.

For starters, Rep. Paul Seaton, R-Homer, has requested funding for an immediate fix.

"I've written a letter to the DOT Commissioner (Leo von Scheben) and talked to Carl High's office and they've put in a request for $100,000 so they can fix the extreme worst holes or $200,000 if they can get to all the bad spots," Seaton said. "Doing all the bad spots would be best, but if that's not attainable, $100,000 would get the worst spots."

During a public meeting about three years ago, Seaton said public consensus favored a "real fix -- reroute the road off to the east a little bit, move the road where it should be, rebuild and realign it." That's a project that attracts the necessary attention by being added to the State Transportation Improvement Projects -- STIP -- list. Projects involving safety issues, specifically deaths on a particular stretch of road, move quickly up the list, as do projects with matching funds committed by a local of borough government and projects reflecting people working together.

"The STIP is open right now, so there needs to be a lot of momentum to get it on the list," Seaton said, adding the STIP list is open for additions until the first of June. He urged everyone impacted by the road's condition -- residents, emergency responders, hospital personnel and others -- make their concerns known by DOT.

Milli Martin, who represents the North Fork area and is currently president of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, said she has requested this section of road be added to the STIP list each of the nine years she's been on the assembly.

"What was really frustrating was five or six years ago when they totally redid the STIP list and every road was taken off except for East End Road," Martin said. "We just don't have the population to qualify. They've come up with tighter criteria and it's hopeless."

Competing with other roads in other areas of the state is indeed a challenge. For that reason, Joselyn Biloon, DOT planner for the Kenai and Kodiak areas, feels the North Fork Road would be better served as a borough road.

"It's unfortunate that the state inherited a lot of roads that really should be local roads, administered locally where decisions could be made about them," Biloon said. "If you think about what's important for the whole state, it's hard to make a strong argument for the North Fork Road. As it stands now, it's a very similar situation to Ohlson Mountain Road, which also has terrible, terrible trouble during breakup."

What got attention for Ohlson Mountain Road was a loud public outcry.

"It was a matter of citizens getting together and bringing pressure to bear," Biloon said. "They called and wrote me, very upset. I called Rep. Seaton to come to a meeting, asked the assembly to send someone and had (DOT) maintenance. We got estimates what it would cost to fix the road, three variations from very expensive to horrendously expensive. They decided on the full-on project."

That kind of support moved Ohlson Mountain Road up on the borough's priority list and increased its importance in the eyes of the state, according to Biloon.

"While I have received some comments about the North Fork Road, it's not something the state can solve on its own. It's something the citizens, the borough, everybody has to be involved in and have a vision of what they want done with that road," Biloon said.

Acknowledging any letters sent to the governor or the commissioner about the road would be forwarded to her, Biloon suggested contacting her directly at joselyn.biloon@alaska.gov.

"I understand the level of frustration," she said. "There's probably six weeks a year when that road's terrible."

Viewer-provided videos of the south end of the North Fork Road can be seen at www.homernews.com.

McKibben Jackinsky can be reached at mckibbenjackinsky.@homernews.com.