Gove Road

Gove Road runs southwest from Pond Street, a little east of Salem Road, to Richards Street. Until 1988 it was Walnut Street, one of the 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. A deed of January 1989 for three of the Central Park lots on it is headed "Gove Road (formerly Walnut St.)."

Like most of the Central Park streets, Walnut Street long remained a private way, built up gradually. By the 1980s Billerica had three Walnut Streets, and in the selectmen's campaign of 1988 to 1991 against duplicate street names the board voted on April 25, 1988, effective July 1, 1988, to rename "Walnut Street, 3rd right off Pond Street beyond Salem Road," as Gove Road; the other two became Horman Road and Yale Street. The committee's reasons were not printed, and the origin of the name has not been found.

The town accepted the street in two pieces at the fall town meeting of October 1988, under Article 32: "the laying out of Gove Road formerly known as Walnut Street from Pond Street to a point 350 feet southeast of Broadleaf Street and from a point 285 feet northwest of Richards Street to Richards Street," a way 50 feet wide, the first section about 850 feet long and the second 285 feet. The warrant had asked for the whole length "from Pond Street to Richardson Street." In 1989 the town accepted Richards Street "from the southwesterly side of Gove to Willow Street." Gove Road 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, 1988: fall town meeting accepts the laying out of Gove Road, formerly Walnut Street, in two sections (Article 32)
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1988: selectmen's sub-committee for re-naming streets; Walnut Street, 3rd right off Pond Street beyond Salem Road, renamed Gove Road (voted April 25, 1988)
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1990: Street Renaming Committee report; 214 street names changed between 1988 and January 1991