In Upper and Lower Canada, concession roads were laid out by the colonial government through undeveloped Crown land to provide access to rows of newly surveyed lots intended for farming by new settlers. The land that comprised a row of lots that spanned the entire length of a new township was "conceded" by the Crown for this purpose (hence, a "concession of land"). Title to an unoccupied lot was awarded to an applicant in exchange for raising a house, performing roadwork and land clearance, and monetary payment.[1] Concession roads and cross-cutting sidelines or sideroads were laid out in an orthogonal (rectangular or square) grid plan, often aligned so that concession roads ran (approximately) parallel to the north shore of Lake Ontario, or to the southern boundary line of a county.
Unlike previous American colonial practice, land in Ontario was surveyed first before being allocated to settlers.[2]
The provision of road allowances was an advance over earlier survey systems which allocated no roadways.[3] Waterloo township, for example, had no road allowances.[4]
In some townships, the "line road" name (e.g., Ninth Line) was applied to the roads that elsewhere were called "concession roads", i.e., roads that ran between two adjacent concessions.
Corner of 8th Concession and 18th Sideroad, King Township, Ontario
Survey systems
By one count, there were five major Ontario survey systems, with 166 variations, resulting in a "crazy quilt" of surveys.[3] In many cases special colonization roads ran diagonally across the grid. Survey lines referenced back from the Great Lakes ran at different angles, forming triangles and other irregular shapes. Some townships had more than one survey. Holland,[5]Nelson[6] and Toronto Township (today Mississauga) are examples.
In a common square grid layout known as a 1,000-Acre Sectional System, adjacent parallel roads were 100 chains or 1+1⁄4 miles (2.0km) apart, and arranged as ten 100-acre lots each 20 chains by 50 chains[7] so that two consecutive concession roads and two consecutive side roads enclosed a square of 1,000 acres (4.0km2).
Another system used 100-acre lots each 30 by 33+1⁄3 chains, again arranged in 1000-acre blocks. Concession roads were 5⁄6 mile (1.3km) apart, while sideroads were 1+7⁄8 miles (3.0km) apart.
Other plans used during colonial surveying used different layouts and lot sizes of 100, 150, 160, 200 or 320 acres.[8]
Sample survey size, Ontario Concession System
In a single-front survey, lots were measured from one side of the concession to the other. Any errors in the survey became apparent at the road junctions, with the side roads being offset.[9]Example Jogged Intersection in Single Front Township
Single-front survey example (Ontario)
In a double-front survey, lots were measured from the front of the concession to a midpoint, and then from the back of the concession to the midpoint. This makes the road junctions even, but any errors result in jogs at the midpoint of the side road.[9][10][11]Example Even-Intersection Jogged-Sideroad in Double Front Township
Double-front survey example (Ontario)
Special terms
Road allowance—a strip of land for provision of a public road between lots. Typically 66 feet wide or one chain.[12]
Unopened road allowance - is a public highway that has not been opened and assumed for maintenance purposes by-law of the township.[13]
Baseline—The first concession road in a township, was often called the baseline (from the surveying term), and roads so named remain in many municipalities, including Ottawa, Clarington and London.
Front—the first concession road was also frequently called the front.
Broken front—concession along a lake shore.[14][15][16]
Townline—a boundary line or road between two townships, e.g., Adjala-Tecumseth Townline. Note that townlines might be side roads.
Given roads—special roads made to avoid natural obstacles that interfere with the grid.[4]
There is considerable variation in concession road nomenclature. Markham, for example, has both "Ninth Line"[18] and "11th Concession Road".
In some townships, numbering is sequential, starting from one side. For example, in King Township, concessions start from Yonge. Bathurst is the (former) Second Concession road, between concessions 1 and 2 (forms the front of the second concession of land). There is no "first" concession road.
In some townships, the baseline passed through the middle, with concessions numbered on each side.
For example, in Peel Region and Dufferin County, Hurontario Street is the centre line, with concession line roads to either side being numbered East or West. In present-day Mississauga (which has two surveys, divided by Eglinton Avenue) Kennedy Road is the former "First Line East" in the northern survey, and McLaughlin Road is the former "First Line West". The abbreviations "EHS" for "East of Hurontario Street" and "WHS" for "West of Hurontario Street" are used in Dufferin.[19]
In Warwick Township in Lambton County, the Egremont Road was the baseline, with successive concessions numbered either "North of the Egremont Road" ("NER") or "South of the Egremont Road" ("SER").
In some townships, such as those in Bruce County, each side of each successive concession road comprised a separate numbered concession. Thus, the south side of a road might be Concession 2 and the north side Concession 3. In this system, for the purposes of road signing only even (or, sometimes, odd) numbers were used, so that concession roads were successively numbered, e.g., 2, 4, 6, etc. This simplified the address numbering of farm lots, especially along township boundary roads where opposite sides of the same road were in different townships. Where even numbers were used, the numbers of odd-numbered concessions would appear only in property records (e.g., Lot 18, Concession 11, Brant Township, which would be on the north side of Concession Road 10).
Many concession roads retain their original names. Less developed areas are often referred to as "back concessions".
Side road numbering
Side road or sideline numbering varies depending on the township. Some examples:
Sequential—In King Township, sideroads were numbered consecutively. The last concession road was 13, so the first sideroad was 14, the next 15, and so on.
By adjacent lot number—Many townships in Bruce County, are numbered in multiples of 5, i.e., starting with the town line (road on township boundary), then numbered 5th, 10th, 15th, and so on, with five lots between each pair of successive sidelines in the original township survey. The side road number is tied to the adjacent lot number.[20]
Many side roads are no longer numbered, but have been given names. For example, In Renfrew County, most side roads are given names, with Stokes Road, Patterson Road, Dillabough Road, Cheese Factory Road, as examples. McIlwraith points out that the naming process has been underway for many years.
Impact
In most of Upper Canada this layout of roads preceded urban development, so that most Ontario municipalities now have grid patterns of streets. In cities, many concession roads have become major streets. However, a few of the "sideline" roads in urban areas still retain their historic numbered lines or use "Line" for their street designations: Brown's Line, Ninth Line, and Guelph Line are important thoroughfares in Toronto and its western suburbs.
Caledon is a town in the Regional Municipality of Peel in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. The name comes from a shortened form of Caledonia, the Roman name for North Britain. Caledon is a developing urban area, but it remains primarily rural. It consists of an amalgamation of a number of urban areas, villages, and hamlets. Its major urban centre is Bolton, on its eastern side, adjacent to York Region.
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. Beginning with the Seven Ranges in present-day Ohio, the PLSS has been used as the primary survey method in the United States. Following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory platted lands in the Northwest Territory. The Surveyor General was later merged with the General Land Office, which later became a part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Today, the BLM controls the survey, sale, and settling of lands acquired by the United States.
King is a township in York Region north of Toronto, within the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada.
The Dominion Land Survey is the method used to divide most of Western Canada into one-square-mile (2.6 km2) sections for agricultural and other purposes. It is based on the layout of the Public Land Survey System used in the United States, but has several differences. The DLS is the dominant survey method in the Prairie provinces, and it is also used in British Columbia along the Railway Belt, and in the Peace River Block in the northeast of the province.
In surveying, a baseline is a line between two points on the earth's surface and the direction and distance between them. In a triangulation network, at least one baseline between two stations needs to be measured to calculate the size of the triangles by trigonometry.
Eglinton Avenue is a major east–west arterial thoroughfare in Toronto and Mississauga in the Canadian province of Ontario. The street begins at Highway 407 at the western limits of Mississauga, as a continuation of Lower Baseline in Milton. It traverses the midsection of both cities and ends at Kingston Road. Eglinton Avenue is the only street to cross all six former boroughs of Metropolitan Toronto.
Steeles Avenue is an east–west street that forms the northern city limit of Toronto and the southern limit of York Region in Ontario, Canada. It stretches 77.3 km (48.0 mi) across the western and central Greater Toronto Area from Appleby Line in Milton in the west to the Toronto-Pickering city limits in the east, where it continues east into Durham Region as Taunton Road, which itself extends 58 km (36 mi) across the length of Durham Region to its boundary with Northumberland County.
The history of Markham, Ontario dates back several millennia. What would become Markham, Ontario was home to First Nations long before European settlement. Seasonal settlements were found from 900 BC to 1650, but traces of these first residence were buried before the area was farmed.
Hurontario Street is a roadway running in Ontario, Canada between Lake Ontario at Mississauga and Lake Huron's Georgian Bay at Collingwood. Within Peel Region, it is a major urban thoroughfare within the cities of Mississauga and Brampton, which serves as the divide from which cross-streets are split into East and West, except at its foot in the historic Mississauga neighbourhood of Port Credit. Farther north, with the exception of the section through Simcoe County, where it forms the 8th Concession, it is the meridian for the rural municipalities it passes through. In Dufferin County, for instance, parallel roads are labelled as EHS or WHS for East of Hurontario Street.
Cooksville is a neighbourhood in Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area region of Ontario, Canada. It is centred around the intersection of Dundas Street and Hurontario Street near the eponymous Cooksville Creek.
Augustus Jones was an American-born Upper Canadian farmer, land speculator, magistrate, militia captain and surveyor. Jones trained as a surveyor in New York City, and fled as a United Empire Loyalist to Upper Canada. In Upper Canada, he worked as a crown surveyor in the Nassau District, where he quickly rose to the position of Deputy Surveyor General, the highest position in a district of Upper Canada. He occupied that position from 1789 informally, and 1791 formally, until his retirement in 1799. During that time he laid down many of the township boundaries in the Niagara Peninsula and on the north shore of Lake Ontario. He led various teams that cut many of the first sideroads and concession roads into these areas, facilitating their settlement by European and American immigrants. Jones also surveyed the routes for Dundas Street and Yonge Street, and supervised their construction. After his retirement, Jones farmed first in Saltfleet Township, later moving to Brantford and finally an estate outside Paris named Cold Springs, where he died in 1836.
Bervie is an unincorporated place and Compact Rural Community in the municipality of Kincardine, Bruce County in southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is located on Ontario Highway 9, and is on the Penetangore River, which flows to Lake Huron at the town centre of Kincardine.
Burnhamthorpe Road is a major arterial road in the cities of Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario; beginning at Dundas Street, near Islington Avenue, running west and becoming a rural road in the Town of Oakville, where it terminates at Tremaine Road, where it changes name.
References
↑ McIlwraith, Thomas R. "Concession line". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on February 3, 2013. Retrieved 29 November 2012.
1 2 Hart, John Fraser (1998). The Rural Landscape. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp.159–163. ISBN978-0-8018-5717-1.
1 2 McIlwraith, Thomas F. (1999). Looking For Old Ontario. University of Toronto Press. p.61. ISBN978-0-8020-7658-8.
↑ Hubbert, Mildred Young (1983). The Paths That Led To Holland. Owen Sound: The Historical Society of Holland Township / Stan Brown Printers. pp.vi. ISBN978-0-9691275-0-5.
↑ Machan, Claire Emery (1997). From pathway to skyway revisited: the story of Burlington. Guelph Ontario: The Burlington Historical Society. p.57. ISBN978-0-9691040-1-8.
↑ McIlwraith, Thomas F. (1999). Looking For Old Ontario. University of Toronto Press. p.52. ISBN978-0-8020-7658-8.
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