Not Just Pets: County Roads Available for Adoption

If roads could talk, you would hear thirty of them in Martin County calling out, “I’m available! Pick me!”

Keep Martin Beautiful manages a unique adoption program – not for children, dogs or cats, but for roads. Throughout the county there are 148 roads included in the Adopt-a-Road program. An impressive 118 of them have been adopted by individuals, families, churches, school and civic groups, nonprofit organizations, neighborhood associations, and large and small businesses.  Some have even been adopted by the same group for decades!

But that leaves 30 roads in Stuart, Port Salerno, Palm City, Jensen Beach, Indiantown and Hobe Sound that still need some love and attention.

Any individual, group, organization or business can volunteer to adopt a road. Once you’ve chosen “your” road, you take on the responsibility to keep it litter-free. At least every three months, you (plus family, friends and the other volunteers in your group) pick up any litter that has accumulated along your designated stretch of the road and dispose of it properly. It’s that simple.

Keep Martin Beautiful provides garbage bags and gloves - and even pick-up sticks when they’re available. 

Keep Martin Beautiful partners with Martin County and the City of Stuart to install Adopt-a-Road signs. Once you sign up through Keep Martin Beautiful, pay the annual fee to help underwrite the program, and choose how your name will appear, a sign will be put up on “your” adopted road showing your commitment to a litter-free Martin County.

In addition to your name appearing on the signage, you might also find yourself featured on Keep Martin Beautiful’s Facebook and Instragram pages.  We love to turn the spotlight on our wonderful community volunteers.

A plastic bag caught in a bush. A soda can thoughtlessly dumped on the roadway.  A little bit of litter leads to more litter and before you know it, our lovely community is blighted with trash. With the Adopt-a-Road program, we know volunteers are keeping an eye on our roadways and making sure that litter is consistently picked up and properly disposed of. It’s all of us working together to keep Martin County beautiful.

It sure does! The numbers speak for themselves. Last year we had 268 volunteers who spent 546 hours cleaning roadways and removing 5,417 pounds of trash.  

Keep Martin Beautiful’s website, https://www.keepmartinbeautiful.org/adopt-road.html,  has an interactive map that you can use to choose the road you want. Maybe it’s the one closest to your home or business, or maybe it’s a road that has fond memories for you. Select your road and then complete the easy form that sets the adoption in motion.

Hear that sound? It’s a grateful sigh from a community that appreciates your willingness to adopt a road and Keep Martin Beautiful.

PS: We’re gearing up for the 2025 Great American Cleanup starting in March. Sign up now and get your supplies from Keep Martin Beautiful.