Rural Reckoning | Colorado highways are crumbling and so is the funding to fix them

With the build of a football lineman and the grit of a rancher, Republican Sen. Byron Pelton gripped the steering wheel of his truck and pointed toward the highway ahead — a stretch of road that runs through the heart of his district in the Eastern Plains.

“Do you see how bad this is?” Pelton asked. “My brother-in-law served two tours in Iraq, and he says he drove on better roads over there than he did here.”

The pavement along Colorado 63 lay uneven, the asphalt worn down and splitting apart from the wear of semitrailers and stock trailers. Black patches — potholes that had been filled — ran perpendicular to the painted yellow stripes, laying every few feet along the stretch of highway.

Pelton, who lives in Sterling and represents a handful of counties in the northeast corner of the st