Gorham Street

Location	Map
Laid Out	1699
Right of Way	60 ft
Pavement	24 ft

Gorham Street is the continuation of Boston Road (Route 3A) north of the Billerica line, through the corner of Chelmsford and into Lowell. Only its first few yards, at the junction with Boston Road and Amherst Street in North Billerica, touch Billerica; the rest of the wiki's segment, and the whole of the street, lie in Chelmsford. The line it crosses has been the Billerica and Chelmsford line since 1655, when the land west of the Concord River was added to Billerica by a line from the Pawtucket stake running "43° west of south, the present Chelmsford line," so no part of Gorham Street was ever in Billerica.

The road is the Chelmsford end of the old country road between the two towns. Henry A. Hazen found that "Of the Chelmsford Road no description is recorded." The road first crossed the Concord River at The Fordway; after the bridge at the Corner was built about 1699 (see Corner Bridge), committees of Billerica and Chelmsford altered the road between the towns on Sept. 25, 1699, and the line toward Chelmsford has run from the Corner ever since. In Billerica deeds of the nineteenth century the whole road is "the County road leading from Boston to Lowell." When Billerica named its streets, the committee of 1897 began its list with "Main street, from Chelmsford line, running south to Burlington line," and the Historical Society's list, accepted March 27, 1899, with "Boston road, from Chelmsford line running south to Burlington line."

The name Gorham Street belongs to Lowell, where the road enters the city, and was carried over the short Chelmsford stretch; its origin is not explained in the Billerica records. The Massachusetts Highway Commission's layout of Aug. 3, 1915 in Chelmsford is for "Gorham Rd., Rte. 3A," "From Billerica Line to Lowell Line." The Lowell name was once applied to the Billerica road too: in April 1903 the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company petitioned for poles on "Lowell street between Gorham and Elm streets, North Billerica; Gorham street between Jones' Corner and Billerica Centre," meaning Boston Road, and the selectmen granted it in those words. Billerica never adopted that name.

The County Commissioners relocated the road where it crosses the town line in 1893; their plan of "Boston Road Billerica as ordered by the County Commissioners 1893" shows the new line running across the Chelmsford boundary between the lands of Prentiss Webster and George Suttle. Chelmsford lists Gorham Street as a state highway, with layout dates of 1894, 1895 and 1915, and the state laid out Billerica's end of the road "From Chelmsford line to S'ly Amherst St." on May 1, 1917. The road carried Route 3 between Boston and Lowell until the expressway was built in the 1950s and has been Route 3A since. Being outside the town, Gorham Street was never on Billerica's lists of accepted ways.

Gorham Street

Gorham Street

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