Drivers in the early 90s couldn’t take US 278 to I-95. Here’s why construction took years

Editor’s note: This story was first published in the Island Packet on April 28, 1995. In honor of The Island Packet’s 50th anniversary, we are republishing stories from our archive.

I-95 link on pace to open by August

Motorists will have a quick link to Hilton Head Island when half of a new four-lane road from Interstate 95 opens in late summer.

But it will be at least another year before the divided highway to U.S. 278 is ready for two-way traffic, a state highway official said.

“We’re progressing a whole lot better now than things have dried out,” said Wendell Mulligan, resident construction engineer in the state Department of Transportation’s Ridgeland office.

“I would say somewhere around August, hopefully, we will have the (eastbound lanes) opened up,” he said.

The nine-mile link will carry traffic from I-95’s Hardeeville exit 8 and join U.S. 278 at McGarvey’s Corner, 12 miles west of Hilton Head. Construction of the westbound lanes will begin when the eastbound lanes open.

The entire $17.5 million, four-lane divided highway is scheduled for completion in May 1996. The contractor, L-J Inc. of Columbia, began work Feb. 7, 1994.

The work now under way involves two subcontractors, he said. Carolina Bridge of Orangeburg is building a 350-foot long bridge over the New River, just south of State Road 141 on the Beaufort-Jasper county line. Avant Construction of Walterboro is doing earth work.

Rainy weather last fall and early this year caused project delays, and contractors also had difficulty with a sand barrow pit that contained poor material.

A new barrow pit on Union Camp Corp. land off S.R. 141 is providing better material for embankments, and “we’re making a whole lot of progress now,” Mulligan said.

The connector’s eastbound lanes will parallel a 2.5 mile section of S.R. 141 through the Great Swamp. That section of S.R. 141 will be rebuilt as part of the connector’s westbound lanes.

When the connector’s eastbound section opens, S.R. 141 traffic will be shifted onto it while the old 141 bridge is demolished and replaced, he said.

The project involves three other bridges and 2.8 miles of side roads. The S.R. 141 overpass at I-95 and exit 8 is being widened from two to five lanes. Twin 90-foot long bridges just below Joker Joe’s at exit 8 have been completed.