GETTING JIGGY WITH THOSE JOGS IN KAWARTHA'S ROADS

Have you ever wondered why there are jogs in the roads when the original surveys created grids and all the roads were supposed to be straight?

In the Kawarthas, the survey of roads was completed before the waves of immigrants began flooding to the region in the first half of the 19th century. This afforded an opportunity to have a planned, "rational" landscape in contrast to the winding roads that derived from traditionally taking into account the actual geography of the region.

The grid was a way for a government that had few employees to impose order on a region it knew little about.

Sorting out this grid was left to the surveyors who would use a 66-foot long metal chain with 100 links to measure the landscape; 80 chains equalled one mile. The acre was derived from customs of medieval British husbandry using oxen to plow 10 furrows, each one 10 chains long.

The lots were arranged into concessions separated by a road allowance. A perpendicular crossroad ran between each block of five lots marked with wooden posts and/or marks on trees.

It was slow work and by the time settlers came to take up their lots, most of wooden markers had disappeared. Over the years, surveyors and local residents would spend far more time trying to make sense of the original survey

than it took to actually survey the township.

The greatest inconsistencies typically happened in measuring the length of

the lines, rather than their bearing, which is reflected in the side roads. The Glenarm Road and Cedar Tree Road are prime examples.

Often, the measurements of adjacent concessions did not quite line up, leaving half of the lots aligned to one line, and the other half aligned to the next road over.

The survey of Verulam Township is worse than most thanks to Sturgeon Lake. When crews arrived at the lakeshore, they did not see how to measure the width accurately, so they guessed ... incorrectly. The result was concession lines measured more or less correctly starting at the south end of the township and significantly off to the north. When the roads were built, they had to force road allowances between existing lots, rather than using the disjoint allowances that were provided.

For those who like geometry, having a township based on a grid made navigation easy. Up until the introduction of civic addresses after amalgamation, farm families often gave their location by lot and concession. It worked for the most part; until someone came across one of those "jogs."

Fortunately, errors made in surveying early townships, typically further south and more suited to farming, resulted in reforms in the surveying system introduced in 1829. Ironically, by the time the province was laying out northern Ontario, where the land was better suited to raising trees than wheat, the available methods for creating an agricultural grid were more sophisticated than they were for what would become the prime farmland of southern Ontario.