Burnham Road

Burnham Road runs southeast from High Street in North Billerica, opposite Marion Road, to Oak Street. Its first few hundred feet from High Street are an old way. The water department's accounts list a main on "Burnam Road," costing $424.56, among the mains laid by 1918, and the directory of 1919 lists "Burnam Road from High opp Marian rd southerly N B." It had already been laid out, spelled Burnham Road and fifty feet wide, on a "Plan of Land in Billerica" drawn in 1913 by Dudley & Sawyer, civil engineers, filed with the Land Court on October 1, 1914 and registered on January 21, 1915 (Land Court Plan 5089-A), which also shows Rowell Road and house lots of John E. Rowell between the two roads. The road is not in the directory of 1916, so it was probably opened on the ground about 1917 or 1918, a few years after the Boston & Maine car shops opened nearby. The spelling Burnham is used in the town reports from 1923. No record says which Burnham it was named for. The only Burnham in the town records of those years with a connection to High Street was John F. Burnham, warden of the town almshouse off High Street near the Tewksbury line in 1911 and 1912, but nothing ties him to the road.

For half a century it was a short dead end. In 1928 the town voted $2,500 to tar and gravel High Street "a distance of about 2500 feet from Mt. Pleasant Street to Burnham Road." On March 14, 1953 the town voted to "accept the laying out of Burnham Road easterly from High Street, a distance of 350 feet," and raised $250 to improve it.

The rest of the road, to Oak Street, belongs to the house lot developments of the late 1960s along Carriage Road, Carmel Drive, Ashdale Road and Kingsbury Lane. An article to accept Burnham Road "from the accepted portion, approximately 350 feet, to Station 22" was laid on the table in 1968, and Burnham Road was accepted, with Carriage Road, Ashdale Road, Carmel Drive and Kingsbury Lane, under Article 40 of the annual town meeting of 1972, whose sessions were held in April. A six-inch main was laid "to tie in existing 6-inch dead end" in 1970, and sewers came under a lateral sewer contract for the Billerica Avenue and Burnham Road area in the later 1970s.

Burnham 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, 1918 (in the 1915-1919 volume): water main accounts, with Burnam Road ($424.56)
2. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1953: town accepts the laying out of Burnham Road easterly from High Street 350 feet and raises $250 (Articles 89-90)
3. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1956: list of streets accepted by the town, with Burnham Rd. from High St., 350 ft., 3-14-53
4. Annual Report of the Town of Billerica, 1972 (in the 1969-1972 volume): Burnham Road among the streets accepted under Article 40 of the 1972 annual town meeting