River Road and College Street

Some given names are strictly utilitarian. River Road, one of Masterton’s oldest roads, was named because it led down to the river, or rivers to be exact as it leads to the confluence of the Waipoua and Ruamahanga Rivers. In the 1880s a wool scour was situated at the river end of the road.

College Street was similarly named. It was laid out in 1926, some three years after the establishment of the High School in Pownall Street. The developer, Walter Nops, named this after the street he lived in as a child in England and placed concrete milestones at each end of the street, to replicate those from his home town.

Pic: College Street as seen from oil tanks in Ngaumutawa Road in the 1930s.