| Notes: |
Millbrook Road takes its name from the crossroads of Millbrook, at the intersection with Old Wake Forest Road. Back in the days when Old Wake Forest was US 1, this was halfway between Raleigh and Wake Forest, and had a couple of small bed-and-breakfast type houses for travelers. Today, the crossroads is still the home of the Millbrook United Methodist and Baptist churches, as well as Millbrook Elementary School. The original portion of the road, a two-lane section running east from Falls of Neuse Road to the railroad tracks just past Old Wake Forest, was completed by 1940, although its predecessor through the Millbrook community (consisting of no more than a few blocks) existed as early as the 1920s.
The extensions on either side of the original section, west to Six Forks Road and east to Capital Boulevard, were done by 1970 or so. At this time, the entire road was widened to 4 (or 5) lanes. This is today's East Millbrook Road, and it hasn't been touched since.
By the early 1980s, city planners realized that more people than the Beltline could handle were making the trek down Six Forks and Falls of Neuse roads to take the Beltline out to Research Triangle Park. The city planners designed an extension of Millbrook running west, partially over some existing roads, to hook up with Glenwood Avenue and give commuters a reason to avoid the Beltline.
Construction to transform Shelley, Leesville, and Pleasant Grove Church roads (all 2-lane rural roads) into West Millbrook Road began in 1989 and finished in 1991. Because of the existing roads, the only sections of West Millbrook that were built on a completely new alignment were between Six Forks and Shelley Lake, and then from the existing Pleasant Grove Church intersection to Glenwood. All three roads from which the Millbrook extension took significant real estate still exist; however, especially in the cases of Shelley and Pleasant Grove Church, they are shells of what they were before the extension. The most radical change took place at the intersection with Creedmoor Road, where in the course of a year the two intersecting roads changed from what amounted to two-lane country roads into modern 4-lane divided highways.
The section of East Millbrook between Six Forks and Falls of Neuse roads carries traffic through a residential area, and consequently is signed at 35 mph. The speed can be difficult to maintain given the many hills in the stretch, and police routinely patrol the area and enforce the speed limit aggressively. (You've been warned.) |
