Mandy Wong stepped on the gas, but the wheels of her silver Toyota van continued to spin in the sand and dirt. When she tried to reverse, the vehicle only rocked and sank deeper.

Wong, a Canada Post delivery worker in Newmarket, had taken a wrong turn on her route and ended up on an unpaved, deserted stretch of road populated by beer bottles, battered furniture and discarded bicycles. When she tried to turn around, her tires couldn’t cope with the rough terrain.

Wong was stuck at the end of Bathurst St.

“The road here is so bad,” said Wong, who has been delivering mail to this forgotten stretch for the past couple of weeks.

Fifty-three kilometres north of the foot of Bathurst — where glass condos tower over the bustle of traffic, streetcars and people — comes the street’s unexpected and decidedly unurbanized end. Though they’re only about an hour’s drive apart, the two ends seem worlds away.

For most residents at the southern part of Bathurst, what lies at the other end of the road is a mystery. Adam Buzanis, 28, has lived at the foot of Bathurst for two years and has never made it past its Bloor St. intersection. He, like many others, couldn’t imagine it going very far north.

“I thought it goes up to Eglinton or the 401,” Buzanis said.

So the Star set out to drive from one end to the other, to discover the mystifying north end of the iconic Toronto street. We zipped past the Bathurst Street Theatre, Honest Ed’s and the Barry Zukerman Amphitheatre in Earl Bales Park, on a route that took us through Toronto’s Jewish enclave, the historic Annex district and Koreatown. We continued through Richmond Hill, Aurora and Newmarket.

Eventually, we found the end. Just north of Morning Side Rd. in East Gwillimbury, the road peters out to a rugged dirt path that leads to a dead end. Beyond, an overgrown trail hints that, at one time, the road continued and linked to the rest of Bathurst, which runs another seven kilometres north across Holland Landing.

Bathurst was in fact continuous until the 1990s, when the region closed it because the road was in such poor condition.

But in recent years, this fractured stretch, running about half a kilometre, has become a focus of regional efforts to transform it into a major artery that will connect to Yonge St.

Brian Titherington, York Region’s director of roads, says it has since been recognized as a missing link in the area’s transportation network.

As the region’s population is expected to grow by a third by 2031, to 1.5 million, a reconnected Bathurst is needed to connect municipalities and relieve traffic on parallel Yonge St., Titherington said.

“When you can add a link, it provides people options, and options create capacity . . . (and) mobility for our residents,” he said.

“We would rather add links to our road network than have to widen Yonge St. to six lanes or eight lanes.”

But the $28.7-million project has been marred by delays. Construction was set to begin this year, but archeologists excavating the site recently discovered it bisects a 13th century Huron-Wendat village. They found 98 artifacts and launched further assessments, which will delay construction for at least a year and increase the cost of the archeological evaluation from $490,200 to more than $1.6 million.

“We are uncertain as to when we’re going to proceed with it,” said Stephen Collins, York Region’s manager of engineering. “A lot of it will have to do with what is this archeological resource that we’ve discovered and how best are we going to deal with it.”

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Although officials say revamping this forgotten stretch of Bathurst will improve the region as a whole, local residents are concerned about the impact. Bathurst north of Green Lane Rd. sees very little traffic and is closed to heavy vehicles such as trucks.

Donna De Schulthess, who moved into her home on Bathurst and Morning Side Rd. two years ago, is concerned the rehabilitation of the road will change that.

“I’m for it because the road is awful. But it’s going to increase our traffic flow for sure,” she said. “What I would be opposed to is if they don’t monitor the traffic flow.

“I would hate for this to become a truck route.”

Collins said the road is currently restricted because of its condition, but the goal is to bring it up to regional standards so it can accommodate trucks.

While the region touts north Bathurst’s urbanization, some residents prefer its rural feel. Strachan Bowen, who has lived on his 20-hectare property at Bathurst and Morning Side Rd. for 12 years, said his family considered moving because of the project.

“One of the reasons we’re here is because it’s a quiet street,” he said. “But I don’t have a choice in this. The bottom line is there’s a road going through.”

Because part of Bathurst has been closed for so long, residents have forgotten it was long a major route, Titherington said.

“People start to feel like it becomes a private cul-de-sac because, if the road ahead is closed, you don’t get much traffic there.

“So when we open the road up for the bigger benefit of the region, local residents are going to be upset because there’s going to be an increase in traffic.”