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Route 182A is Connecticut's only surviving 3-digit "A" highway.
Its length includes an 0.80-mile overlap with Route 183 to connect back with Route 182 at Old Colebrook Road; however, that overlap isn't signed. The portion motorists see, along Rockwell Road, is one of the state's shortest routes, at 1.29 miles.
Originally, Rockwell Road was part of Route 182; in 1940, Route 182 was moved south and Route 182A was created. The original definition was the 1.29-mile stretch of Rockwell Road only (measured as 1.30 miles at the time). State maps of Colebrook in 1973 and 1983 imply that Route 182A was silently extended on paper during that time.
In 1960, consultants for Connecticut's statewide highway reclassification recommended the following in Colebrook:
In 1962, the town took a vote on the issue. Some residents were concerned that Smith Hill Road, 18 feet wide, would be expanded to match existing Route 182, which was 36 feet wide, leading to property loss. In any case, Route 182 was never changed, and Smith Hill Road remains a town road.
When it was established in 1772, today's Rockwell Road had no name; it was simply the east-west road to or from a particular landmark. In the 1870s, when a cartographer interviewed high-profile Colebrook citizens to ascertain names for the town's roads, Reuben Rockwell noticed that today's Schoolhouse Road had been marked as Carrington Avenue. Rockwell figured out the source of this pretentious name was the rival Carrington family.
To knock them down a peg, Rockwell told the mapper that the east-west road was O'Connor Avenue. This set the Carringtons off, as they were a bit racist and resented being associated, via Avenues that almost intersected, with an Irish family. In 1957 O'Connor Avenue changed to Norfolk Road, and later it was named after Mr. Rockwell himself.