Bayberry Lane

Bayberry Lane runs from Pond Street southwest to the junction of Salem Road and Richards Street, a little east of the Pond Street and Salem Road corner. Until 1988 it was Chestnut Avenue, the westernmost of the long streets of the "Plan of Central Park, Billerica Mass," made for James E. Burke, owner, by John N. McClintock and Robert B. Bellamy, engineers, of Dorchester, surveyed in November and December 1913 and January and March 1914 and recorded on April 27, 1914 (Plan Book 31 Plan 49). Central Park filled the land between Salem Road and Pond Street, across Pond Street from the new Boston & Maine Railroad car shops, whose "Main Entrance" the plan marks on Pond Street. Its long blocks of 25-foot lots were laid out on Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine, Ash and Willow Streets, running from Richardson Street ("formerly Folly Road") to Pond Street across a Broad Street, with Market, Arch, Race and Vine Streets near Salem Road; a third sheet laid out the "Middlesex Canal Property" of John A. Richardson in the same way. On the plan it is Chestnut Street, running the whole length of the development from Salem Road to Pond Street beside Walnut Street (now Gove Road).

The lots were sold and built on slowly, and the street remained a private way for nearly sixty years. It was accepted as "Chestnut Avenue," together with Market Street from the same plan and many other streets, under Article 40 of the annual town meeting of 1972, whose sessions were held in April.

By the 1980s Billerica had Chestnut Streets in North Billerica, near the Burlington line and at Nutting Lake as well as this Chestnut Avenue. In the selectmen's campaign of 1988 to 1991 against duplicate street names, the board voted on March 7, 1988, effective June 1, 1988, to rename "Chestnut Avenue, From Pond Street to intersection of Salem Road and Richards Street," as Bayberry Lane, the name of a native shrub in place of the tree; the Chestnut Streets became Truman Avenue, Callahan Street and Country Lane. No other reason for the choice is recorded. Bayberry Lane is not one of the roads of the 1831 town map accepted in 2016, and it came too late for the street lists of 1897 and 1899.

References

1. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1972 (in the 1969-1972 volume): streets accepted under Article 40 of the 1972 annual town meeting, including Chestnut Avenue and Market Street
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1988: selectmen's sub-committee for re-naming streets; Chestnut Avenue, from Pond Street to Salem Road and Richards Street, renamed Bayberry Lane (voted March 7, 1988)