Hurontario Street, a major artery connecting Peel region’s three major cities — Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon — is more than just a high-density street dotted with homes and industries.

Rather, it’s a route paved with many fascinating historical and cultural cornerstones. For instance, Cooksville in Mississauga was once home to Canada’s first commercial vineyard in the 1860s and in 1907 there was an oil derrick in the area. Also, Snelgrove, located near Mayfield Road and Hurontario Street in Brampton, was initially known as Edmonton, but the name was changed when mail kept getting misdirected to Alberta.

These and other factoids are part of an exhibit — “The Hurontario Street: Linking Peel”— at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives (PAMA), 9 Wellington St. E.

“What’s really exciting about this exhibition is that it provides visitors to PAMA a chance to glimpse some of the treasures in our archives,” said Annemarie Hagan, supervisor and curator, museum services at PAMA. “Anyone who lives here (Peel) has travelled on this road. It’s important that we look around and see our world and think about what it was like in the past. This exhibit also offers an important perspective on the Region of Peel’s strategic plan of imagining the future.”

Staff from PAMA’s museum and archives worked together to create the collaborative display, Hagan explained.

Fifteen metres of aerial images from the 1960s stitched together with fascinating historical tidbits, photographs and trivia underscoring the street’s identity and evolution form the heart of the exhibit.

For instance, during early to mid 1800s, stretches of Hurontario Street in Port Credit were crudely constructed by laying logs crosswise on the ground and pouring dirt and gravel on top. The "corduroy roads" as they were known are a far cry from the modern asphalt.

“This (exhibit) shows how important roads are in community building,” said Jim Leonard, regional archivist, PAMA. “We call Hurontario 'the spine of Peel'. This was — and is — the anchoring road that connects one end of Peel to the other. It’s not just a road, it’s all part of a fabric that builds communities …”

The exhibit will run at the Tunnel Gallery in PAMA until March 5.