Rogers Brook

Rogers Brook is a small brook west of the Concord River, between Billerica Center and North Billerica. It rises in the wet woods west of Shedd Road and runs east past Kazimer Drive and Mcrayne Hill Road, through the River Pines neighborhood along Sycamore Lane, and under Bridle Road to the river below Hart Way, a course of about a mile.

The brook takes its name from the old Rogers Avenue, the street now called Sycamore Lane, which runs west from Bridle Road beside it. Rogers Avenue was laid out on the "Plan of River Pines, Unit 5," drawn in May 1928 by R. F. Smith and recorded that June (Plan Book 52, Plan 7); on the plan the diagonal Sprucewood Road follows the line of land "now or formerly Rogers," and the street probably took its name from that land. Rogers Avenue became Sycamore Lane in the street renaming of 1988 to 1991, and the brook name first appears in print just then, in the public works reports of 1991 and 1992. It should not be confused with the Rogers farm of North Billerica, which became the town farm (see Poor Farm Brook).

Before it had this name the brook seems to have been counted as a Winning brook, after the Winning family and the Winning Pond country to the southwest. In 1914 the town voted to extend the water main "from the hydrant on Bridge Street, along said Bridge Street to Bridle Road, and along said Bridle Road to Winnings Brook, an entire distance of about 3,000 feet," which is the distance from Bridge Street to the point where this brook crosses Bridle Road. Bridle Road itself was built in 1910, when the highway surveyor cut the woods fifty feet wide and built a roadbed 3,399 feet long, and it crossed the brook on a wooden bridge. It was on the list of bridges "repaired or replanked" in 1924 and was replanked again in 1931; articles of 1929 and 1931 asked to replace it "with culvert pipe," and the town's street lights of 1932 were to stand on Bridle Road "at Basswood Avenue, the Bridge, Rogers Avenue." In 1936 the highway department "replaced wooden bridge with 40' x 48" metal coated culvert," filled 300 feet of the roadway, raised the grade eighteen inches at the crossing and put up 170 feet of guard rail.

As River Pines and the streets west of it filled with houses, the town drained the land along the brook: drainage at Kazimer Drive is listed among the public works projects of 1977, and drainage construction "off Kazimere Drive" in 1980. In 1991 the public works department "started a guardrail program and completed River Street hill and Bridle Road at Rogers Brook." The brook still runs in the open through a narrow wooded strip between the house lots, crossing Bridle Road in its culvert a short way above the river.

Rogers Brook

Rogers Brook

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