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MUNISING - A $5.1 million construction project that will upgrade about 10 miles of Alger County Highway 58 has begun north of the Kingston Plains.

By Wednesday, the project will be in full swing with the primary access route to and through Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore shut down over the entire construction zone until next year.

"It's going good," said Alger County Road Commission Chairman Doug Miron. "They're moving a lot of dirt."

Currently, the roadway is closed from Kingston Corners - the intersection of H-58 and the Adams Trail - north to the Kingston Lake Campground.

The state's campground at Kingston Lake and the Hurricane River and Twelvemile Beach campgrounds at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore are accessible via H-58 from the eastern end of the park at Grand Marais.

Other park attractions located to the west and east of the construction zone remain open.

On Thursday, huge trucks loaded with fill dirt from a sand source uncovered in the woodlands west of Kingston Corner shuttled dirt to the construction zone.

A mile or so north of Kingston Corner, construction surveyors from STS Consultants in Marquette worked along the roadway while a bulldozer pushed down the fill dirt dumped by the trucks.

In some places, the road will be filled in as much as four feet, according to one of the surveyors.

On Wednesday, the entire H-58 construction closure will begin with the road closed to through traffic from the Little Beaver Lake Campground Road to the Kingston Lake Campground.

The closure will remain in effect until next August.

Little Beaver Lake Campground will remain open and can be accessed from the west along H-58. The road closure begins just beyond the campground road.

Michigan Department of Natural Resources state forest campgrounds at north and south Gemini lakes, Ross, Canoe and Cusino lakes will remain accessible via a detour off H-58 from the west at Melstrand.

An information sign and handouts is posted along H-58 at Melstrand to aid motorists entering the area.

Road builders expect to have the first layer of pavement from Buck Hill east to the Ross Lake Road in place by Nov. 12 .

For more information on the construction, contact the Alger County Road Commission at 387-2042, or visit the agency's Web site at www.algeroads.org