In California, the county doesn't maintain a private road. The owners who hold the easement do, and under Civil Code section 845 they split the cost by their written agreement or, with no agreement, in proportion to how much each owner uses the road. That's private road maintenance in California in two sentences, and it surprises a lot of people who bought five acres outside Red Bluff or Cottonwood and figured the grader that works the county road would keep coming up theirs.
It won't. Tehama County Public Works says on its own site that county crews aren't permitted to plow private roads or non-county roads, and the county's road standards say it has no responsibility for maintaining them. If your road isn't in the county maintained system, it belongs to you and your neighbors.
November is when this turns into a real argument. The first couple of storms find every low spot, the ruts fill up, and the owner at the far end starts asking who's paying for rock.
What Civil Code 845 says
We're contractors, not attorneys, so treat this as a plain summary and take a real dispute to a real estate lawyer. The statute is short. You can read Civil Code section 845 yourself in about two minutes.
Here's what it covers:
- The owner of a private right-of-way easement, or of the land the easement is attached to, has to keep it in repair.
- When several owners share the easement, they split the cost under their written agreement if they have one.
- With no agreement, each owner pays in proportion to the use they make of the road.
- If an owner won't pay after a written demand, the others can go to small claims or superior court for that owner's share, and they don't have to wait until the work is done to file.
There's also a snow removal provision, which matters up around Shingletown or Forest Ranch and not much on the valley floor.
Look at what the law leaves out. It doesn't say equal shares, and it doesn't define "use." Attorneys who write about this section point out how little case law there is on measuring it. That gap is the best argument for putting your own split in writing.
Do you already have a road maintenance agreement?
Maybe, and you might not know it. Pull the preliminary title report from when you bought the place. Road maintenance agreements get recorded against the parcels, so they show up there.
Newer subdivisions usually have one. Tehama County's road standards require a recorded road maintenance agreement, with a way to fund the upkeep, when a subdivision is served by a private road. Older land splits are a different story. Plenty of foothill parcels east of Red Bluff and around Paradise have nothing but a line in the deed granting an easement for road and utilities, and no word on who fixes it.
Shasta County has another tool called a Permanent Road Division. It's a district with the Board of Supervisors as its governing body, the owners pay an annual parcel charge, and that money goes back into their road. The road still isn't part of the county maintained system. What changes is that the county collects the charge, so nobody has to knock on doors with a clipboard.
How neighbors usually split the bill
There's no one right formula. These are the four we see most on shared roads in Tehama, Butte and Shasta counties.
| How it's split | Works well when | Where it falls apart |
|---|---|---|
| Equal share per parcel | Parcels are similar and everybody lives there full time | The owner 200 feet in pays the same as the owner 2 miles in |
| By distance from the county road | A long road with houses strung along it | Somebody has to measure it, and owners of vacant parcels push back |
| By use (trips and vehicle weight) | One owner runs hay trucks or a logging job | Hard to measure and easy to fight about |
| Base share plus a damage clause | A build is coming, with concrete trucks and a well rig | It has to be signed before the trucks show up |
Our opinion: split by distance, and add a clause that whoever brings in heavy trucks for a build or a timber harvest repairs what they tear up. It's the closest thing to "in proportion to use" that people will sign, and it heads off the most common fight we see, which is one owner's house construction beating up a road eight families paid to rock the year before.
What the work is, and what order to do it in
A gravel road fails because of water. It either sheds rain or holds it, and a road that holds it turns to soup under tires.
So the money goes to drainage first and rock second. On a typical job that means cutting the ruts and potholes out to full depth and reshaping the surface so it has a crown again, instead of dumping loose rock into holes where it'll be gone by February. Then we pull the ditches so they carry water and clean out the culverts, checking each outlet for scour. On steeper stretches we'll cut rolling dips to kick water off the road before it builds speed. Rock goes down last, on a shaped and compacted surface.
That order matches what the University of California's Rural Roads guide for California landowners recommends: inspect before winter and after heavy rains, and keep ditches and culverts free of debris.
Rock is the big line item on a long road. Recycled base from a concrete and asphalt recycling yard packs tight, and it's worth pricing against quarry rock before you order. We wrote up how that compares in our post on recycled base rock.
Two permit notes. If a culvert on your road carries a creek, replacing it can involve the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which we cover in our culvert replacement post. And where the private road meets the county road, work in the county right-of-way takes an encroachment permit from public works.
When we'd tell you to wait
Here's the trade-off nobody likes in November. A full regrade on saturated clay makes a mess. The blade smears the surface, the rock punches down into the mud, and you've paid for a road that looks worse in March than it did before.
If your road is still passable, we'd spend this winter's money on drainage and spot rock in the worst holes, then do the full reshape in spring when the ground is firm but still has enough moisture to compact. If it's already impassable, that's a different conversation, and our post on washed out driveway repair covers the emergency version.
Getting one bid the whole road can agree on
Eight households can't hire a contractor. One person or a road association can. Pick a point of contact, have them walk the road with us, and ask for the scope broken out by segment (county road to the first fork, the fork to the creek crossing, and so on). Segment pricing makes the split math easy no matter which formula you chose.
Send the written request for each owner's share before the work starts, not after. The statute is built around a written demand, and people pay more willingly for a road they haven't driven on yet.
Walberg, Inc. has done grading and site prep out of Corning since 1999, and we own and maintain the equipment the work takes. For drainage problems bigger than a ditch cleaning, our storm drain crew handles the pipe.
Common Questions
Who is responsible for maintaining a private road in California?
The owners of the easement are. Civil Code section 845 puts the duty to keep a private right-of-way in repair on the easement owner or the owner of the land it serves. The county has no duty to grade or plow a road outside its maintained system.
Can I make my neighbors pay for private road repairs?
Often, yes, if they share the easement. Civil Code 845 lets the other owners sue for a share after a written demand goes unpaid, in small claims court if the amount fits under that court's limit. Whether it applies to your road depends on your deeds and any recorded agreement, so have an attorney look before you file.
How is the cost split if there's no road maintenance agreement?
The statute says in proportion to the use each owner makes of the easement. It doesn't spell out how to measure use, which is why most neighbors settle on distance from the county road or an equal split and put it in writing.
Will the county take over our private road?
Not unless the Board of Supervisors formally accepts it into the county maintained system, and counties generally want the road built to their standards first. That's expensive on an old gravel road. Call your county public works department to ask what they'd require.
How often does a private gravel road need grading?
It depends mostly on traffic and drainage. A road with a good crown and working ditches can go a long while between gradings, and one that holds water will need attention every year. Walk it every fall before the rains and again after each big storm.
The bottom line
Get the split in writing this winter, while the potholes are fresh in everybody's mind. Spend first on drainage, because rock on a road that holds water is money you'll spend again. Then request a free estimate from Walberg, Inc. with the road length and a few photos of the worst spots, and we'll walk it with your point of contact. We work across Tehama County and into Butte and Shasta, and if a new driveway or pad is part of the plan, our house pads and driveways page shows how we handle that.