Evans Pass Road in the suburb of Sumner, Christchurch

Evans Pass Rd – Formerly part of the Lyttelton-Sumner Road. Named after Lieutenant Evans of HMS Acheron. Development of the road began in September 1849 under the direction of Captain Joseph Thomas (b. 1803?), chief surveyor for the Canterbury Association. He had thought to take the road over the hills at the back of Lyttelton but Evans, involved in mapping the coastline, suggested taking the road along the side of the hill towards the harbour entrance for about 2 miles so that it crossed the summit at only 640 feet, the lowest point on that side of the harbour. Much blasting and side cutting was necessary. First appears in street directories in 1957. Walter de Thier (1884-1973), a farmer, is the sole resident. A huge amount of information from the library website. There was so much information about the building of the road that I didn’t look information about Lieutenant Evans. There were lots of birth and death notices for Sumner Road but because it included the Lyttelton side I am not sure if there were any for the Sumner side. Even with only searching four newspapers there were thousands of entries so I narrowed my search to before 1880. So many letters to the editor in the 1850s about the building of this road. There was a report in May 1855 about the constant stops and starts of building the road. The report said that Captain Thomas started work in Sept 1849 and work was suspended in April 1850. Restarted December 1850 and stopped again sometime in 1851. Obviously it was eventually finished as it was opened in August 1857 on the 24th inst. Note the formal opening ceremony was before the road was finished and the reason was the consequence of his honor leaving the province. W Bray was against this road as he wanted the Bridle Path to be the main route fro Lyttelton to Christchurch. Many locals agreed with him. In 1852 there was a letter from the inhabitants of Lyttelton to Sir George Grey about the money that was being spend on the road. They would have preferred the money to be spend on the facilities in Lyttelton and that the road was unnecessary when there was shipping available between Lyttelton and Sumner. Several letters about the cost of the road.In November 1856 there were a couple of letters to the editor from people wanting a tunnel at Evans Pass going from Sumner to Lyttelton. They felt that it could be done cheaply by using prison labour. By 1858 the letters to the editor were more positive about the road with the fact that the Sumner Road has been of use after all and preferred over the boats and open seas option. These days Sumner Road is only on the Lyttelton side and I only walked the Sumner side which is Evans Pass. I also did not walk the entire road as this is not something that you can do safely so I only walked the footpath that leads to Sumnervale Drive. Only 26 properties here and the earliest is dated 1920. Then there is one or two houses from every decade from 1950s onwards. A mixture of styles and a couple are really lovely. As I am Lyttelton born and bred we obviously travelled this road a lot when I was a child and before the road tunnel was built but only have a vague memory of it.