Highway 26 to coast will have overnight detours

Portland — Motorists driving U.S. Highway 26 between Portland and the Oregon Coast will face an overnight 15-mile detour Sunday through Thursday nights until late May.

The Oregon Department of Transportation is imposing the detour while contractors repair a tunnel that collapsed and killed a highway worker on Jan. 28, 1999.

The 800-foot-long Dennis L. Edwards Tunnel, named for the ODOT worker who died in the collapse, will be closed from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m.

The tunnel is in the Coast Range about midway between Portland and the highway’s junction with U.S. Highway 101 south of Seaside, 40 miles east of the coastal junction and 33 miles west of downtown Portland.

A signed detour will direct nighttime drivers onto state Highway 47 and Timber-Vernonia Road.

Contractors will suspend work during Oregon’s spring break, March 18-27.

Bill Deiz, an ODOT spokesman in Portland, said the agency temporarily shored up the tunnel after it collapsed in 1999. The current project will permanently repair the tunnel.