Working in an El Paso County right of way takes a permit

The moment a project reaches into a county road or county right of way in El Paso County, whether that means digging, trenching, staging equipment, or closing off part of the lane, it stops being entirely your own to manage. Public Works keeps a right-of-way application for exactly that work.

The permit is built around one idea: whoever tears up public road space should be able to put it back. The application asks you to show enough financial resources to restore and repair the affected right of way, so the county is not left patching someone else’s trench. Road, bridge, drainage, sign, signal, and right-of-way work all run through the same Road and Bridge program.

This catches more projects than people expect. Driveway connections, utility hookups, culverts, private construction along the road edge, and events or contractors that need to borrow the shoulder can all cross the line. A contractor who says “we do this all the time” is describing experience, not the specific approval that this stretch of road requires.

The honest question before any of it begins is simple: does the work reach county right of way? If you are not sure where the right of way ends and your land starts, that is worth pinning down first. When the answer is yes, the El Paso County Public Works forms and Road and Bridge pages are where the application lives, and the time to use them is before the first shovel goes in.