One of the city’s most interesting streets, does in fact has an interesting story of how it came to be. It originally started as a alley behind North Street. One of its first residents was Bernie Dillinger who gave it the name of Burma. Back in the 1940s as Bernie recalled “A rough, rocky, unpaved road.” Dillinger’s mailing address was 507 1/2 North Street. The 1/2 referred that he was located in the alley, and not fronting North Street.
Dillinger gave it the name Burma, for the famed road in Indochina of the same name. He was attempting to get the city’s attention, since the city did nothing to maintain and it never qualified for snow removal. This, of course, made it treacherous in the winter months, especially at that time Burma did not connect to Roop Street. Instead near the bottom of the hill it made a sharp turn and exited out onto Hill Street. With Dillinger’s due diligence the city finally started to maintain it, and even placed a street sign with the name of Burma Road.