Grand Junction Road is the longest east–west thoroughfare in the Adelaide metropolitan area, traversing through Adelaide's northern suburbs approximately 8 kilometres north of the Adelaide city centre. Route Travelling from the Port Adelaide region, it is mostly a double-lane sealed road (triple-laned between South Road and Cavan Road/Churchill Road and between Main North Road/Port Wakefield Road and Hampstead Road/Briens Road) (becoming a single-lane road past Tolley Road intersection at Hope Valley, South Australia) running 21 kilometres to the base of the Adelaide Hills. The western end at the intersection of Old Port Road, 300 metres east of a causeway which separates the Port River from West Lakes. The 2.4 kilometre section of road that continues west of Old Port Road to Semaphore South is named Bower Road. The eastern end of Grand Junction Road is in the suburb of Hope Valley, at the intersection of Hancock Road and Lower North East Road, just before the latter proceeds into the Adelaide Hills, past Anstey Hill Recreation Park and on towards the towns of Houghton and Inglewood. History The Grand Junction, located at today's intersection of Grand Junction Road and Churchill Road, is the meeting point of what was once the most accessible route out of Adelaide City to the north (over the Torrens via Port Road). It was the intersection of North Road, later called Lower North Road (today Cavan Road), and the east–west road from Upper Dry Creek to the Port (today's Grand Junction Road from Walkley's Road to Cavan Road). It remained so until January 1843, when migrant labourers completed a new bridge spanning 120 feet over the Torrens River. This enabled travellers to take the more direct route northward on the road from the city to Gawler Town (later called Great North Road, today Main North Road), and the junction of roads at Gepps Cross took on a greater significance than the Grand Junction. In the mid-1850s the track and road from the upper Dry Creek, past the Grand Junction Inn, to the Port, was variously called ‘road to the Port’, ‘Port Road,’ or ‘Grand Junction' to (Port) 'Causeway Road’. In November 1854 the Legislative Council requested the Central Road Board estimate the cost of a continuous road from the Grand Junction to the "Port-road near Albert Town", rendered necessary by the formation of the Adelaide and Port Railway. The road upgrade was shelved though for two years.