
Lorie Tudor has a lot of fond memories from her 40-year-plus career with the Arkansas Department of Transportation, but one of the fondest was when she helped cut the ribbon at the opening of the Bella Vista Bypass in 2021. The occasion was special for Tudor, who is retiring as director of ARDOT on Jan. 10.
Tudor joined the department in 1981 as a typist and in 1995, she left to pursue an engineering degree. She attended the University of Memphis, rather than the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, because northwest Arkansas was so remote in the days before the completion of Interstate 49.
Tudor earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1997 and returned to ARDOT as an engineer the next year. After two decades in a variety of positions, Tudor was named director in 2020.
“It was an extremely proud moment because I had been involved with the dream of I-49 for a long time,” Tudor said of the bypass opening. “You know, I-49 was not complete when I went back to school. That’s why I went to the University of Memphis, because there’s no real easy way to get to Fayetteville.
“That [was a] long process of building that interstate all the way from Alma, and when we were able to fill in the gap around Bella Vista to connect all the way up to Kansas City on I-49, that project was the culmination of a tremendous investment. It was a lot of work over a lot of years.”