FAIRMONT — Martin County commissioners this week received an update from County Engineer Kevin Peyman concerning county roads.

“This week we should finish up our normal maintenance on our gravel roads, which is the earliest we’ve been done in many years” he said. “Overall they’re in pretty good shape. That doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally have to work on bad spots or things like that but our normal maintenance will be done, which is a good sign.

“We are also starting to sealcoat driveways and entrances this week. We have a process on our sealcoat roads where we do any patching or crack-filling first, and that was done prior to this step, which will take a couple of weeks and put us at mid-June. That will put us right on schedule to get our mainline sealcoating done starting after the Fourth of July.”

Peyman also commented on county campgrounds, which are currently closed.

“They’re open for daily use so people can walk and things like that, but the bathrooms are closed and the campgrounds for camping are closed,” he said. “There were some guidelines for how they could open on June 1, but quite honestly it’s difficult for the setup we have.

“We only have one person who basically maintains five parks. There’s requirements for social distancing and sanitation protocols, but it would be very difficult to meet those without a full-time person at each park.”

Peyman said the Park Board will meet to discuss its options and he will update the board accordingly.

Turning to another matter, the board heard from Lenny Tvedten, Martin County Historical Society executive director.

“As with most things now, we’re working remotely from home but we are able to accomplish virtually everything except having people in the museum,” he said. “We’re working with the Martin County Veterans Committee and sharing their stories of Martin County veterans with the helicopter situation that’s [currently] set for Aug. 1.

“Our school tours are cancelled, but we were able to put together a virtual tour. We had good remarks from the students and teachers on that, so that turned out pretty good.

“We’re also looking at our 2021 calendar, and that’s kind of funded with ads from businesses. But some of these businesses are hurting pretty bad, so we made the decision to carry forward all the ads from 2020 into 2021 at no cost to them. So that’s our plan for the calendar.”

“We’re also working with Van Dewar, who’s putting together a book on the Interlaken Golf Club’s 100th anniversary. He’s done a really thorough job with that, and that’s close to completion.

“We’re also able to continue research requests via email and telephone.”