Bicknell Road

Bicknell Road runs southeast from Cook Street in Pinehurst to the Burlington town line, a little under a mile. No laying out of it has been found. It is one of the old ways that the town said in 2016 were shown on the official town map of 1831, and the Walling map of 1853 shows a Sanborn house near the present 72 Bicknell Road. It was the local road from East Billerica toward Burlington, which had been set off from Woburn in 1799.

For more than half a century it was called the Burlington road. The street naming committee chosen in 1896 (Martin Conway, John E. Rowell and Coburn S. Smith) listed "Burlington street, running easterly from Cook street to Burlington line, E. Billerica," and the Billerica Historical Society's revised list, accepted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899, gave "Burlington road, from Cook street running easterly to Burlington line, E. Billerica." The name came from its destination. It is not to be confused with the state highway, now Boston Road, which the state's layouts of 1917 also called the Burlington Road, nor with the later Burlington Road in the Rio Vista section near the Shawsheen River; records that say only "Burlington road" cannot always be placed.

The road took its present name in the early 1950s. The street was still listed as Burlington Road in the highway reports of 1951, but a zoning article at the town meeting of 1955 described a district at Pinehurst bounded "200 feet from Bignell Road," running "between Boston Road and Bignell Road" southeast of Cook Street, and the town engineer put "gravel for Bignell Road" in 1957. The spelling Bicknell Road appears by 1960, and both spellings were used in town reports for decades afterward. The Bicknell family had lived on the road around the turn of the century: Oscar H. Bicknell married Ina H. Richardson of Billerica in 1892, and the directory of 1912 has him boarding at Mrs. S. E. Richardson's on Burlington Road, while Frank J. and Nellie M. (Essex) Bicknell raised a family in town from the 1890s and sold gravel to the highway department. No vote naming the road has been found, so whether it was named for this family, or for the Bignell family who lived in Billerica in the 1940s and 1950s, is not settled by the record.

It remained a gravel road for many years. The highway reports of the 1940s list it as "gravelled, scraped" and "gravel-patched and scraped a number of times," and the town was still spreading gravel on it in 1957. A water main was laid along it in 1956. It was paved under the state's Chapter 90 program in 1993.

The town's list of accepted streets printed in 1956 still gave "Burlington Rd. Cook St. east to Burlington line," copied from the list of 1899, with no date of acceptance. The road was formally accepted as a public way at the Fall Town Meeting of October 1, 1996, which voted to accept "Bicknell Road, a variable width way, 4,400 feet long more or less, from Cook Street to the Burlington Town line." The town's list of 2016 accordingly placed Bicknell Road among the roads on the 1831 map that had already been accepted.

Historic Buildings

Name	Alternate	Address	Built	Moved	Demolished
Sanborn House		72 Bicknell Rd	1852		1964

References

1. Annual Report 1897: street naming committee, "Burlington street, running easterly from Cook street to Burlington line, E. Billerica"
2. Annual Report 1899: Historical Society street list, "53. Burlington road, from Cook street running easterly to Burlington line"
3. Annual Report 1900: street list accepted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899
4. Annual Report 1951: highway report, "Burlington Road, Scraped and gravel patched"
5. Annual Report 1955: zoning article describing a district at Pinehurst bounded by Bignell Road
6. Annual Report 1957: town engineer, "Gravel for Bignell Road"
7. Annual Report 1956: list of streets accepted, "Burlington Rd. Cook St. east to Burlington line"
8. Annual Report 1996: Fall Town Meeting, October 1, 1996, Article 42 accepts Bicknell Road as a public way
9. Annual Report 1996: Board of Selectmen, "Voted to accept Bicknell Road from Cook Street to the Burlington town line"
10. Annual Report 2017: roads on the 1831 map already accepted, "Bicknell Road, Cook Street, Burlington Town Line, Accepted 10/01/1996"