Woodford County is horse country first: Versailles, Midway, and a great deal of farmland between them. Plenty of homes here sit on long drives that come off a state highway rather than a town street, so this page spends most of its time on the one permit process that affects the most Woodford drives, the state's entrance permit, and on what long rural drives need.
Versailles and its neighbourhoods, Midway, and the farms, estates and rural homes across the county. Building and zoning permits for all three, Versailles, Midway and the county, come from one joint office, the Versailles-Midway-Woodford County Planning Commission. Send your address wherever you are.
Woodford is in the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet's District 7, a twelve county district run from an office in Lexington. If your drive joins a state road and the entrance is being built, rebuilt or widened, the Cabinet's encroachment permit applies. From the district's own permit page and the Cabinet's permits manual, the process runs like this:
The manual defines a private entrance as one serving farms or single-family homes, and we found no application fee listed for entrance permits. Because requirements are set case by case, we contact the district before quoting any entrance on a state road and write down what it will need.
For drives in Versailles or Midway that meet a city street, and for drives onto county roads, the right-of-way rules are in city and county code that we could not read online, and the county road department publishes no permit process. Rather than guess, we call the city or the road department before quoting any work at the road and put what they say on the quote. Sealing, crack filling and patching on your own property need no right-of-way permit anywhere.
A long drive across open farmland is in full sun all day, which greys and dries asphalt faster than anything else, and it usually has grass or a ditch on both sides with nothing holding the edges. It also meets the highway at a single entrance that takes every turning vehicle, from cars to horse vans to delivery trucks.
So the work concentrates on three places. The entrance, where turning traffic breaks the asphalt first and where any rebuild falls under the state permit above. The edges, which need their cracks closed and any crumbling sections cut back and rebuilt before they break away. And the long straight runs, which need nothing more than crack filling and a coat of sealer every few years to hold their colour and shed water. Because the one price per square foot covers crack filling and small patches, the edges and joints are part of every sealing job, not an extra.
Board fence and gateposts often sit close to the asphalt on farm drives. Work along them is done by hand, and anything that should not be coated is covered or kept clear.
Not every Woodford drive is a farm lane. Inside Versailles and Midway the jobs look more like any small town's: shorter drives, some shared between neighbours, some tucked beside the house with a wall or a walk right at the edge. Those are mostly hand work at the edges and a quick coat in between. Where a town drive meets a street, the entrance question goes to the city before it is quoted, as described above.
Not to seal the part on your property. A permit comes into it when the entrance itself, in the state's right-of-way, is being rebuilt or changed.
Usually. The gravel is regraded, topped up and compacted first, and if it is the entrance off a state road, the Cabinet's permit comes first. The quote covers both.
Often, depending on length and weather. The quote says how many days, and the entrance end can be done last so you are never shut in.
Next door: Fayette County to the east, Scott County to the north and Jessamine County to the southeast.
