Ripley, Mississippi, a city of approximately 5,500 residents about 90 miles southeast of Memphis, sits in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. To address growing traffic demands in the city, the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) and W.G. Yates & Sons Construction are working on the Highway 15 project, known as the Ripley Bypass. The new four-lane corridor is designed to improve safety, reduce congestion, and support future economic development throughout Tippah County.
The Ripley Bypass project was first discussed in the early 2000s and has been in the planning stages since 2009. It was originally planned to let in the mid-2010s, but funding shortages delayed construction for years.
The project gained new momentum after the Mississippi Legislature revitalized the highway capacity program and identified the project as a priority for the state of Mississippi. Funding ultimately came through state appropriations provided by the Mississippi Legislature, driven by a record-high funding year for MDOT in 2023 and 2024.
The need for the project stems from heavy traffic on Mississippi Highway 15 (MS 15), the state's longest highway, which serves as Ripley's main street.
Ripley and the surrounding Tippah County have experienced industrial growth. Among the businesses is a large Ashley Furniture Industries distribution center and Big M Transportation, a logistics and trucking company with a fleet of over 400 trucks across North America.
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MS 15 carries between 9,000 and 13,000 vehicles per day, according to 2024 traffic counts, including a significant volume of 18-wheeler truck traffic. There are also several schools in the area where the bypass is being constructed.
“There’s heavy traffic in the area, and people want relief,” MDOT Project Engineer Tyler Fields said.
Expected to reduce congestion in the area, the new four-lane highway will be around 10 miles long with an approximately 1-mile-long MS 2 connector road to the town of Blue Mountain, Mississippi. As part of the project, the team is constructing 11 bridges that will span creeks as well as provide overpasses for local roads to cross. In other locations, the team is installing box culverts.
With the construction of the bypass, MS 15 will skirt around Ripley. The section of MS 15 that currently runs through Ripley will likely remain under MDOT jurisdiction until the bypass is completed and connected to MS 15 on both ends.
This current section of the bypass under construction will connect to MS 4 and eventually Industrial Road north of Ripley, improving connectivity in and around the county and the state. Future sections of MS 15 will continue from Industrial Road to tie back to MS 15 at Falkner, Mississippi.
Constructing a new four-lane highway spanning 10 miles in a rural area requires moving a lot of dirt. The project includes nearly 6 million cubic yards of earthwork with 800,000 cubic yards of borrow material.
Excess material excavated from the project has been hauled to nearby properties through agreements negotiated with local landowners.
“Yates worked out agreements with the local property owners,” Fields said. “The prime contractor hauled the dirt off of MDOT right of way to private property owners’ lots, where it was then final graded and permanent grassed.”
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Transporting the dirt, rock, and equipment also placed significant demands on local roads. Therefore, the team met with county supervisors and aldermen to hash out a plan for handling the material.
Right of way was difficult to access until clearing was completed, and crews still relied on local roads to transport materials until the MS 2 portion of the project was graded to connect back to existing MS 15 and MS 368.
On the south end of the project, crews encountered a large quantity of clay material that had high-volume change properties and expanded when wet.
“We had to undercut large areas, bring in borrow material, and ensure the needed drainage is in place,” Fields said.
There is not an abundance of suitable borrow material in the area, but after soil testing, the team secured the material from local property owners.
“Early in the project, Yates was challenged to find borrow material and then get it from the property owners,” Fields said.
To stabilize the roadway, engineers determined that undercuts ranging from 3 to 9 feet deep were necessary. Filling those excavations required an estimated 800,000 cubic yards of borrow material on the south end of the project.
On the north end of the project, the team did not encounter issues with the materials. However, while excavating to reach the subgrade at the MS 4 and MS 15 interchange, limestone rock was discovered.
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“It was not anticipated to reach limestone before subgrade elevation at [MS] 4,” Fields said. “We ended up doing some redesign to minimize what has to be removed by rock blasting the limestone.”
The project design called for installing a retaining wall and overpass bridge at the MS 2 and MS 15 interchange. When they reached the subgrade, the prime contractor encountered more soil issues.
“They found another high-volume change material that required us to take action, as it wasn’t suitable to support the retaining wall,” Fields said.
The team added 3 feet of crushed rock to create suitable conditions for the retaining wall.
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W.G. Yates & Sons Construction is part of Yates Companies Inc. and is headquartered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. One of the largest construction companies in the United States, Yates employs over 6,200 people and has annual revenue exceeding $5 billion.
While Fields has not worked with Yates in the past, the contractor regularly works with MDOT. Most of Yates’ work is closer to the state capital, Jackson, as there are larger projects in that area.
“This is the first large-scale new construction project in our area that a company like Yates would be involved in working on in several years,” Fields said.
He also noted that earthwork is the company’s specialty.
“They’ve been great to work with,” Fields said.
The state and the contractor have weekly partnering meetings, where they discuss the work planned for the next two weeks, any potential challenges that may arise, and how to handle them.
“Yates has been very detail oriented, provides updates regularly, are very responsive to issues we have, and strive to handle problems promptly at the project level before they become a larger issue,” Fields said.
Fields also said he appreciates that they have hired many local workers for the project.
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The project has a $194 million construction budget, and it is currently on budget. There were value-engineering savings on the project. While working on the interchange at MS 15 and MS 2, the team ended up with 250,000 cubic yards of material that was planned to be excessed off the right of way. However, they were able to use it as unclassified fill elsewhere on the project.
“If we had to dispose of the materials, we would have had to haul it off and bring in other materials for the project,” Fields said.
He estimates that reusing the materials saved $2 million.
This project is 100 percent funded by state funds from the legislature for highway capacity projects.
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Construction on the project began in summer 2024 and is scheduled to conclude in summer 2028. The project is currently on schedule. According to Fields, favorable weather and disciplined project management have helped keep work on schedule.
A dry winter during 2025-26 allowed crews to make significant progress on bridge construction during the summer, while Yates has remained focused on maintaining critical path work even when weather conditions have been less than ideal. If the weather continues to cooperate in the future, Fields believes the project will be completed ahead of schedule.
When the Ripley Bypass is completed, state officials are confident it will serve as a linchpin for economic development projects and boost existing businesses. Fields added that it will help the local area grow economically and allow industry to get to and through Ripley and Tippah County.
The project will also ease congestion and allow through traffic to bypass Ripley. Finally, it will improve safety by providing trucks and local traffic with designated areas.
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- Owner: Mississippi Department of Transportation
- General Contractor: W.G. Yates & Sons Construction, Philadelphia, Mississippi
