If you drive Route 135 between I-70 and Pilot Grove, mark your calendar: MoDOT crews will close that stretch of road, between Chouteau Springs Road and Lang Road, from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, Monday, November 4 through Friday, November 8, according to a Missouri Department of Transportation notice. Crews are replacing a culvert pipe under the roadway — the kind of drainage work that has to happen with the road shut down, not just a lane squeezed shut.
MoDOT isn’t pointing drivers to a specific detour; the notice just advises motorists to “seek an alternate route around the work area” during those hours. If you’re commuting between Cooper County and Boonville on 135 during the first week of November, plan on finding your own way around, or shifting your trip outside the 7:30-to-3 window.
It’s the same stretch of highway that made news this week for a different reason. On Thursday, a 19-year-old Pilot Grove woman was seriously injured when her car hydroplaned on Route JJ near the Route 135 junction and overturned during the storms that flooded roads across the region. Good drainage along 135 is exactly the kind of unglamorous infrastructure work that’s supposed to keep more water off the roadway in the next storm — even if the timing, a culvert closure a few months after a flood, is coincidental.
Route 135 itself runs more than 20 miles through Cooper County, connecting I-70 down toward the Pettis County line, and it’s a route plenty of Boonville-area residents use to get around the north end of the county. If you need more detail before the closure, MoDOT’s Central District can be reached at 1-888-ASK-MODOT (1-888-275-6636), or through its Facebook and X accounts for daily updates once work starts.
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