When vehicles aren't kicking up dirt while driving through the Hollydale Acres subdivision, the air there is pretty clear.

But for residents who have spent three decades dealing with ruts in the unpaved roads, the dust of their frustration has yet to settle.

"It gets pretty depressing," said Debra Watkins, who has lived about 20 years with her husband on Windermere Road, just outside Mount Holly. "In the summer, the houses get dusty because of people driving on the clay. And then when it rains, it’s muddy.

"Then our vehicles are a mess. Our houses are a mess."

Hollydale Acres, just west of N.C. 273 and the Freightliner truck plant, has about 50 residential lots. And it includes several connecting streets that seem trapped in the past. Vehicles driving into the neighborhood on Morningside Drive see a sign that declares, "State maintenance ends," just before their tires leave the asphalt and hit an insubstantial mixture of gravel and grime.

It's among more than three dozen subdivisions and individual roads that have yet to be paved in Gaston County. In all, the county still has 4.11 miles of unpaved roads. That's actually less than Lincoln County's 5.72 unpaved miles and Cleveland County's startling 36.5 unpaved miles, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Stuck in limbo

Many of the stricken communities fell into an unfortunate gap almost 40 years ago. In the 1970s, the state took over maintenance of rural, secondary roads. But it required unpaved roads to meet minimum standards before the N.C. DOT would add the routes to its system. Someone other than the state has to pay to do that.

In the 1980s, Gaston County passed an ordinance requiring paved roads in all newly constructed subdivisions. But communities such as Hollydale Acres, which is dominated by manufactured homes, were established before that took effect.

When Ron Lofton originally bought his home in Hollydale long ago, he was told the developer would eventually pave the dirt roads there.

"But they never did," he said.

Hollydale Acres is surrounded by land that has been annexed by the city of Mount Holly, including the upscale Autumn Woods subdivision right next door. But annexing Hollydale would require the city to pave all its roads from scratch, which it has no interest in doing. So it has left that pocket of real estate alone.

State and county programs have existed in the past 20 years to help get such roads paved. But limited public funding for those initiatives has made for very slow progress. And residents who live along the rural routes are typically required to chip in more money than they can afford.

DOT spokeswoman Jen Thompson said Hollydale Acres isn't on the state's road system.

"Any maintenance would fall on the responsibility of the property owners," she said.

Paving often cost-prohibitive

Gaston County launched a Road Assessment Program in 1994 to help rural subdivisions with unpaved streets. On a case-by-case basis, the county funded 80 percent of the construction upfront. Neighborhood residents then had 10 years to pay the county back through what amounted to a property tax.

But Public Works Director Ray Maxwell said county commissioners haven't put any tax dollars toward that venture in about a decade. And even when it was active, numerous communities had trouble raising the money it would take to get the paving projects off the ground.

"Some of these are pretty costly to bring them up to state standards," Maxwell said. "It quickly becomes cost-prohibitive."

In Hollydale Acres, Lofton has made a habit of using his tractor to routinely regrade the gravel and dirt throughout the community. But some ruts are harder to repair than others.

His neighbors, Lynn and Joan Carrier, have begun asking fellow residents to each contribute $20 a month to help maintain the local roads, whether that means buying gravel to spread or something more effective. Only a few have committed.

The Carriers would like to see the county begin funding its road improvement program again. But they aren't holding their breath.

"I've been down here 28 years on this mud road," Lynn Carrier said. "We've called senators, congressmen, the governor. We don't expect to get anything for free. We'll pay through our taxes if we need to. But we can't get anything done."

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.