Burnhamthorpe Road

Burnhamthorpe Road was originally laid out in 1806 as the first concession road north of Dundas Street in Toronto Township (now Mississauga). It is named after a former hamlet in Mississauga, which in turn was named by settler John Abelson for his hometown of Burnham Thorpe, England.[3] In Toronto, the road was a tolled plank road built in the 1840s running west from the former Village of Islington though Etobicoke Township and was referred to as Mono Sixth Line Road.[4] It was informally also as the Back Line, Adamson Sideroad, and Rogers Road in Toronto Township west of the Credit River, and Back Concession Road in Halton County (present Region) until 1966.[5] The "Back" in these earlier names referred to the practice of backing 200-acre (81 hectare) rectangular farm lots onto the road, while having their access fronting onto the adjacent Dundas Street and what is today Eglinton Avenue.[6]

Until the 1980s, the street was broken by the Credit River, when a high-level bridge was constructed across its deep and wide valley. Further west, to facilitate the crossing of the smaller Mullet Creek ravine by a new alignment, the street deviated southward from its original course, parts of which make up three residential streets; Fifeshire Court, Burbank Road, and Rogers Road (the latter being a historic name) today.[6]

Burnhamthorpe begins at Dundas Street in the Islington neighborhood in Toronto's west end and heads west, crossing and interchanging with, Highway 427. At Renforth Creek there road was re-routed resulting in a stub to the north that runs as Old Burnhamthrope Road. After crossing the Etobicoke Creek, it enters Mississauga and is designated Burnhamthorpe Road East. At Hurontario Street, it passes by the iconic Absolute World condominium towers, enters Mississauga City Centre, and changes to a West designation. A linear park, lined with residential towers, runs along the south side of the street through here. Landmarks located in the City Centre on or near Burnhamthorpe include Square One Shopping Centre; the Living Arts Centre; and Mississauga Celebration Square; with the Mississauga Civic Centre situated just to the north. Continuing west past the city centre area, it traverses a mixed commercial and residential zone, before crossing over the wide Credit River valley on a high-level bridge, and entering the leafy Erin Mills district. Just west of Winston Churchill Boulevard, it narrows to two lanes, crosses over (but has no interchange with) Highway 403, enters rural northern Oakville, and after approximately another 8 kilometres (5 miles), breaks at Highway 407-ETR and the Sixteen Mile Creek. It resumes briefly west of the creek, and terminates at Tremaine Road. Its course is continued west by the Number 1 Side Road.

Burnhamthorpe Road was a relatively minor artery through Toronto's west end until traffic increased due to the growth of Mississauga. Much of this new traffic consisted of a growing number of MiWay (then known as Mississauga Transit) city buses travelling to and from the Toronto Transit Commission's Islington subway station. By the late 1990s, the number of buses had gotten so high that residents with homes on the street began complaining, and demanded that the MiWay buses use Highway 427 and Dundas St. to access Islington station. They even occasionally blockaded buses in what became known as the Battle of the Buses. The councils of both cities got involved and the TTC eventually banned MiWay buses from using the bus bays at the subway station. But by 2001, the ruckus died down and MiWay's buses began fully using the station again.[7][8]