Mother Nature closes AZ Hwy 87 through Payson

Wow! The North-South Highway through Payson has been CLOSED by a landslide for several days. Now if you live in a state with lots of highways, you may not appreciate the situation. Hwy 87 (also called Beeline Hwy) is one of the TWO major North-South routes from the Phoenix and Tucson area to anything North.

Here is a link to the story in our local paper - We were actually on that road the day the landslide happened. I was taking continuing education classes in Gilbert. When we headed home about 5:30 we noticed that police were holding up traffic coming South from Payson, and were diverting it over towards Globe. We thought maybe there had been a bad accident. We were lucky to get through. Shortly after the road closed in both directions (this was last Friday) and remained completely closed for several days. Now, that meant that anyone coming from the metro area to Payson had to detour either far to the East through Globe and then back to Hwy 87 (INTERESTING roads), OR they had to take Hwy 17 North, get off at Camp Verde, take Hy 260 East to Hwy 87, and South 30 some miles DOWN the Rim to Payson.

It looks to me on AZ Dept. of Transportation site as if now they have opened one lane of the Northbound road to Southbound traffic, so at least people can crawl North on the road.