Great Elm Road

Location	Map
Laid Out	1914
Right of Way	35 ft
Pavement	14 ft

Great Elm Road is a street of the Nutting Lake section running southeast across Howard Avenue and Pearl Road to a dead end, near the Middlesex Turnpike. It continues the line of Elmtree Road, which runs north across Marshall Street to the lake. It was the southern part of Elm Road, one of the streets of the first plan of Nuttings Lake Park, "Plan A," drawn in April 1910 by C. A. Thayer, engineer, of Providence, Rhode Island, and recorded May 31, 1910 (Plan Book 27, Plan 57), where Elm Road runs parallel to Tremont and Cherry Roads and is crossed by Pearl Road, Howard Road and Pine Road. The name is that of the tree; the plan gives no other explanation.

Elm Road was a private way for many years. A special town meeting on October 28, 1946 accepted the laying out of a list of Nutting Lake streets that included "Elm Street" and Pearl Road, and on May 9, 1949, after a motion to dismiss and a rising vote of 92 to 44, the town accepted "Elm Road (from Marshall Street to Massachusetts Avenue) plus 100 feet extension on already accepted part of Elm Road"; which part had been accepted in 1946 is not stated, and the 1949 vote concerned the part north of Marshall Street, toward the lake. Pearl Road was accepted for "200 ft. from Elm St." in 1946.

Billerica had several streets named Elm, and on September 12, 1988 the selectmen, on the recommendation of their sub-committee for re-naming streets, divided Elm Road in two, effective November 15, 1988. The part "From Parcel 60, Plate 88, northerly across Marshall St. to Nutting Lake" became Elmtree Road, and the part "From Parcel 60, Plate 88, southerly across Howard Ave. and Pearl Road to a dead end" became Great Elm Road. Great Elm Road was repaved in fiscal 2003. It is not one of the roads of the 1831 map accepted in 2016.

Great Elm Road

Great Elm Road

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