The Sheffield Lake Road That Didn’t Get Built – 1947

As a Sheffield Laker, I find this kind of interesting – a kind of “what might have been” scenario.

Back in March of 1947, there was a proposal to extend Walker Road in Avon Lake through Sheffield Lake, all the way to Root Road in Lorain. The idea, as explained in an article in the March 25, 1947 Lorain Journal, was that it might help alleviate congestion on Lake Road.

But it was a dead-end proposal.

Today, Walker does extend into Sheffield Lake a little west of Abbe Road, but that’s about it. I’m not sure if the plan was to try and utilize some of the old Lake Shore Electric right-of-way or not, but it must have been deemed impractical.

The road would have sliced through an awful lot of properties, and it wouldn’t have been particularly far from Lake Road anyway, with the southwestern slope of Lake Road. So it probably wouldn’t have accomplished very much.

You can see from this current map of the city that there just wasn’t any natural route for Walker Road to follow through town.

So maybe it’s just as well for me that the road wasn’t built, as it might have run right behind my house in the Mariner’s Watch development. But then again, it might have been nice to have a direct route to Dairy Queen on Walker in Avon Lake.