40 NORTH SHORE BREEZE and Reminder 
The Wood Roads on the North Shore 
By COL. W. D. SOHIER 
HE wood roads on the North Shore have been one 
of the features which have made it famous through- 
out the country as one of the most beautiful pleasure 
grounds in America. 
There are now some twenty-eight miles of these 
wood roads which have been built and are maintained 
by private subscription. Automobiles are excluded 
from all of them except the new Manchester Water- 
works road, and the connecting road going through 
the Chebacco woods. 
Over thirty years ago some of the public-spirited 
citizens on the North Shore believed it would be de- 
sirable to develop a variety of drives which would en- 
able people to see the beauttful forests and lakes that 
exist in such profusion in Beverly, Manchester, Glou- 
cester, and the towns immediately back of them,—ir 
Essex, Hamilton, and Wenham. . 
Colonel Henry Lee and Mr. Charles H. Dalton 
raised the money and had the first private wood road 
constructed about 1878. This was the road beginning 
at Preston Place and running through the Chebacco 
woods, passing by Gravel Pond, Chebacco Pond, Round 
Pond, and Beck’s Pond, and it marked the beginning 
of the development of those beautiful woods. 
This same Mr. Dalton was largely instrumental 
in securing the opening of Brookwood Road, and he 
and Col. Henry Lee requested the writer to take up 
their work and help develop the woods and wooded 
drives in the neighborhood of Beverly and Manchester. 
There are several wood roads which have been 
laid out and built by the towns, notably Crooked Lane 
in Manchester, and Common Lane and Greenwood Ave- 
nue in Beverly. 
The writer secured the rights of way and the neces- 
sary money to build Wood Lane, in Beverly, running 
from Green- 
wood Avenue 
to Hull Street 
through the 
commons north 
and south, and 
Branch Lane 
and Boulder 
Lane, running 
through the 
commons east 
and west. 
Some years 
later Horsehill 
Lane was built 
to connect 
Boulder Lane 
with Preston 
Place and the 
Chebacco Wood 
Road. Rights 
of way were se- 
cured and a 
road was built 
along the south 
side of Chebac- 
co Lake, con- 
necting with - 
Pond Street in 
een These roads offer an endless variety of drives through 
most beautiful woods, skirting many ponds........’’ 
the town of Essex, and making a circuit of that lake. 
The next wooded road to be built was Conomo 
Drive, running from the Chebacco Lake road to the 
Four Corners in Essex at the end of the Manchester and 
Essex road. 
In 1906, the old stage road which had been abon- 
doned for many years, between Manchester and Essex, 
was improved, widened, and graded, the Essex half of 
it being done by the summer residents, who raised 
money for that purpose by subscription, and the Man- 
chester end of it being built by the town of Manchester. 
In 1907 and 1908 Forest Lane was built, running 
from Forest Street in the town of Manchester back of 
the Hssex County Club, and continuing through Glouces- 
ter along the shores of Haskell Pond and so out to 
Essex Street. The next year Laurel Lane was built 
eonnecting Forest Lane with the Manchester-Essex 
wood road, and making it possible for a person to start 
in the woods at Manchester and go back on any one 
of the several wooded drives that connect the woods 
with the shore. 
Mr. Philip Dexter had meantime built quite a 
number of private wood roads which connect with For- 
est Street and lead out to Magnolia Station. 
In 1909 money was raised for the improvement and 
widening of Hesperus Avenue running through the 
woods back of Norman’s Woe in the city of Gloucester, 
and connecting with Magnolia Point. é 
Original when the roads were built they were con- 
structed only ten or twelve feet wide, and cost some- 
thing in the neighborhood of twenty-five or thirty cents 
a foot to build. As the Shore becam settled and more 
people used the roads, they have been built wider, and 
now most of them are nearly eighteen feet in width 
from one side of the road to the other. They have cost 
in these later 
years some- 
where about a 
dollar a _ foot 
to construct. 
Crooked 
Lane and the 
Manchester end 
of the ,Old 
Road have been 
maintained by 
the town of 
Manchester, and 
the other pri- 
vate wood 
roads have 
been maintain- 
ed by subscrip- 
tion made up 
every year by 
the summer 
residents on the 
North Shore. 
Th ets=e 
roads offer an 
endless variety 
of drives 
through most 
beautiful 
