Baker Road

Baker Road was created before the First World War to connect Carrington and Mangorei Roads.

The Mangorei Road Board borrowed £500 in 1905 in order to construct a metal “dray road” (wide enough for a large horse-drawn cart) connecting Carrington Road with Mangorei Road. The money also covered the cost of a bridge across Te Hēnui River. Interest on the loan would need to be paid, fences erected and farmers compensated for the land taken, so it was decided that residents would be charged a special levy of one farthing (a quarter of a penny or 20 cents in today’s money) for every pound worth of rateable property. The road was named after Robert Alexander Baker (1824-1913) who owned most of the block, an early settler who arrived in New Plymouth on the ship Blenheim in 1842.

But the cross road remained in a “fearful state”, muddy and difficult to traverse during winter, until 1915 when a petition signed by 19 of the 39 families who lived along the road was presented to the Taranaki County Council. The petition promised that the residents would raise £90 towards the cost of metalling the road if the council would agree to provide a further £60 to match a recent government grant of £150. Despite opposition from other residents, who believed the council should foot the entire bill, especially as the Great War was raging and “[we are] not very rich”, the petition was accepted and metalling went ahead. This meant the road was usable all year round and tradespeople as well as residents were able to get from one road to another more easily.

With an increase in the number of motor vehicles using Baker Road in the 1920s, the County Council began to receive complaints about the “dangerous nature of [its] sharp corners” but there was never any public money available to remedy the situation. In 1925 the Taranaki Daily News reported that “interested settlers” had lost patience and were undertaking improvements themselves, “free of charge”. Straightening efforts continued throughout that decade and into the 1930s.

Those decades also saw the route of the annual Davie Cup athletics race, named after Dr Peter Cousin Davie and competed for by local harriers, start at the Vogeltown bus terminus then go up Carrington to a smithy on Baker Road and back, a distance of around six miles.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.