Luck At Last Road: the proof

On 4 November I posted Crime wave in Cambridge #2, the police report from the 29 October issue of our local paper, Cambridge Edition. It included this item:

Wednesday, October 22

Police attended a domestic incident in Luck at Last Road.

Some unkind people suggested that I had made this up, that there could not possibly be a road of that name.

In 1989 Eris Parker researched the district’s street and road names for the Cambridge Museum. Her report on roads L to G is here and has this to say:  

LUCK AT LAST ROAD
One story goes that in 1907 two locals, in sheer desperation to get this road, went to Wellington with their case. The telegram eventually came back, ‘Luck at Last’.

But this is the story as told by Will Hicks – ‘Mr G S Day, Mr E Nickle and my father Mr J T Hicks were early settlers along what is now Luck at Last Road All the timber for the houses etc, was carted across country, creeks etc having to be forded. At the opening of the High Level Bridge between Leamington and Cambridge, by the then Prime Minister (sic), Mr Day and my father were able to meet him and put their case, which he said was a very deserving one. Shortly afterwards work began on the road and after waiting for five years these settlers had a road. Next, the Matamata County asked for a suggestion for a name. My Mother put forward the name Luck at Last and it was accepted.’

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a photo of the street sign I took last month, with Maungatautari in the background. If you enlarge the image, you will see that Luck At Last is a No Exit road. Make of that what you will.