Jones Line - End of Steeles Avenue Traditional Cache
lylefair: Age and arthritis prevent me from maintaining this cache.
Jones Line - End of Steeles Avenue
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(small)
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2009-08-28: The street sign has been changed from "Steeles Avenue" to "Conservation Road".
An easy road-side cache marking the south-west end of Steeles Avenue at Jones (Milburough) Line.
The Jones Line or Baseline is a survey line running fifty miles north-west from Burlington to Arthur. It was laid out by Augustus Jones, a deputy-surveyor of Upper Canada, in 1792. He and his party of indigens started at Brant's Tree in Burlington in September. Brant's Tree, reputed to have first sprouted in 1720, still stands on Allview Avenue. His goal was to find the point where that north-west line intersected the Thames River, thus circumscribing the source of the Grand River and establishing the limit of the Haldimand Grant, the assigning of the lands six miles on either side of the Grand River from its mouth on Lake Erie to its source, to the Mohawk Nation and other Six Nations Indians. But he crossed the Grand River near Fergus, and after seven weeks and fifty-miles, arriving at the Conostogo River in Arthur, or Brandy Creek, slightly to the south, realized that such a line would never intersect with the Thames River and turned south-west in an effort to find it.
Even though it crossed the Grand, rather than establishing its source, the Jones Line was used to delineate the upper boundary of the Haldimand Grant. This boundary, and many other aspects of the Grant, including the subsequent sale or appropriation of parts of it, are in dispute today.
The orientation of the roads and land titles of that part of Southern Ontario east to Highway 27, and north to Highway 9 is determined by the Jones Line. Its north-west course explains the inconvenience one experiences in driving due north, east, south or west in this area; concessions and roads have been laid out parallel or perpendicular to it requiring the path of such trips to be two sides of a right-angled triangle and a trip as much as forty per cent further than a crow might take. It serves as the boundary between Halton and Hamilton (Wentworth County) and various townships in Wellington County.
Several roads lie along Jones Line, but Jones Line is not a thoroughfare; there are many gaps, some with visible road allowances, some hidden, or annexed by neighbours. Swamps and hills and urban development interrupt its march through farmlands.
The Jones Line series of caches mark points of interest along this historic landmark.
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