91Ô­´´ Township council has approved $9,990,000 in funding to repave a historic section of Old Yale Road linking 91Ô­´´ City to Murrayville's Five Corners.

The funding vote on Monday, Oct. 21, was the final approval for a project that has been debated for years – what to do with the crumbling stretch of concrete and asphalt that was 91Ô­´´'s first paved road.

The stretch of Old Yale from roughly the Nicomekl River floodplain to 216 Street was paved in the 1920s. Before that, every road in 91Ô­´´ was still dirt or gravel.

It is also a remaining portion of one of the oldest roads in the community. The Old Yale Road was hacked through the forests in the 1870s as a wagon road linking New Westminster and the rest of the Lower Mainland through to Hope and Yale. 

Before the Yale Road was built, the only routes were via Telegraph Trail, built a few years earlier, by footpath, or on a boat on the Fraser River.

The road was later covered with gravel, and in 1922 the stretch leading to Murrayville was paved in large concrete slabs.

Parts of those slabs are still visible and used to this day, but the original concrete has crumbled, and the surface has for years been a patchwork of century-old concrete and asphalt.

For years, the remaining concrete was left in place for historic reasons.

Last year, the council voted for reconstruction. There will be 150 metres of new concrete road from 214A Street to Five Corners, with heritage markers, traffic calming, a multi-use path on one side and a sidewalk on the other.

The construction contract is expected to be awarded early next year, and the re-paving and other upgrades to be complete by November 2025.

Before council voted to approve the spending, staff noted that the budget has gone up since estimates were presented last year, due to the rising costs of construction.