nfitz
Superstar
Preston too back then! And all of Woolwich Township south of that road that runs from south of Conestoga to Ariss.
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The Ontario Township Survey System
- Thread starter pipolchap
- Start date
Johnny Au
Senior Member
Notice how in Scarborough, north-south arterial roads have jogs like east-west arterial roads in the former York Township.
Yes, Kitchener-Waterloo has probably the oddest street plan of all cities over 100k people in probably all of North America.
Yes, Kitchener-Waterloo has probably the oddest street plan of all cities over 100k people in probably all of North America.
jamincan
Active Member
In any case, the five-point intersection is quite common in Kitchener; Weber/East/Ottawa, Weber/Cedar/Lancaster/Krug, Lancaster/Ellen/Frederick, Lancaster/Queen/Victoria, Glasgow/Park/Strange, and Ahrens/Water/Victoria are all examples. A bit of research suggests that the railroad may have forced a more discordant pattern in Kitchener, but this particular configuration seems too ubiquitous to be a coincidence.
nfitz
Superstar
Isn't that the natural effect of having different grid systems colliding? It's certainly well-planned in places like Washington, D.C. I don't think that's the case in Kitchener. Though apart from the first example, the others all seem to not be a true 5-point intersection, with two roads coming together before joining the other 3. Though perhaps Park/Strange/Glasgow was converted at one point (and even Weber/East/Ottawa has been now). LOL, I was thinking you were missing the perfect example of Laurel, Peppler, Erb - but now I look at the map, I guess the parking lot for a strip mall doesn't count!
There is Dupont/Albert/Dorset as well.jamincan
Active Member
I suppose it might be a combination of both the streets determining the grid and the grid determining the streets. In particular, I suspect that King, Victoria and Lancaster all predate a well-established grid. My understanding is that King existed before any of the settlements really did and was the primary settlement road into the region. Victoria simply parallels the Grand Trunk RR, and Lancaster probably follows the desire line from Berlin to Bridgeport. It appears that the grid then radiated outward from King Street (probably predating Lancaster), but for some reason, east of Lancaster, the grid is defined by Victoria. I have no idea why Frederick would follow its alignment though. It would certainly be interesting to see a time-lapse showing when individual streets were built/surveyed.
spider
Senior Member
Surely the methods available to surveyors in the 1800's when ship captains could calculate their location by celestial sightings were more sophisticated than dragging a chain from Toronto to North Bay.
CDL.TO
Moderator
Why are you sure of that? A chain is 20m/66'. You're saying that celestial sightings have a greater accuracy than 20m?
spider
Senior Member
I visualise a system where a celestial sighting would establish a benchmark every 10 miles or so and micro measurements from these benchmarks could be made by chaining.
A concession is 6600 feet wide, 100 chains laid end to end over hill and dale, the cumulative error possibilities over longer distances would not be acceptable so some reliable baseline must have been established at reasonable intervals.
nfitz
Superstar
Given the errors that you see between every concession (which are the jogs in the roads), I wouldn't assume that non-acceptable errors didn't creep in.
I've always pondered if the error was a function of how much liquor the surveyors were using ...