Summer is the season for road trips to locations both near and far. It is also the time for road construction and detours. For some of us, this provides the occasion to pull out our maps in a vain attempt to avoid getting lost en route.

I have lived in the Calgary environs since I moved from Saskatchewan almost 30 years ago. I am generally confident about where I am going in the city, but there are still times when I get lost, especially when I have to venture off my usual routes and into an industrial area. The invention of the cell phone has been a wonderful thing – it has allowed me to call my husband, who was usually in front of an all-knowing computer, to ask for directions. There came a time, however, when he felt I was ready for something called a a “map app” on my phone, so I would have the latest map available at my own fingertips, especially for journeys to the fringes of the rapidly growing city. Most of the time it works.

However, the last time I became hopelessly lost at an infinite loop of on- and off-ramps, certain I was not the only one to ever fall into this trap, I found myself asking how the city could be arranged so illogically. A few weeks ago I had the chance to find out. The last week of July is Historic Calgary Week, a 12-day affair that this year held 65 events (lectures and guided tours), most free of charge. I attended a fabulous talk by Doug Coats at the Calgary Public Library about the organization of the city streets and why they did not appear to make sense.

He explained that the evolution of the city layout had occurred due to certain forces that had shaped the arrangement and designation of the streets. As bad as I felt it was today, it turns out it was much worse in the past.

The first force was the coming of the CPR in 1883, which caused the city centre to develop on a section of CPR land, rather than at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers where the initial settlement of Fort Calgary was located.

Avenues were laid out parallel to the train tracks, which had been constructed according to the topography of the land, not the pre-existing Dominion Land Survey grid of Townships and their component sections. Therefore the survey grid lines were oriented exactly east-west, but the tracks and avenues were not. Subsequent surveys extended the city plan until it intersected with the section boundaries. These junctions resulted in some very short avenues and crossroads that varied from the expected 90 degrees.

Further complications were introduced by private landholders on the outskirts of the city who conducted their own surveys, subdivided their land in a variety of ways, and named their own streets. This resulted in the existence of four parallel and different First Streets at one point in time! At this stage in the lecture, a lightbulb in my brain went off: this was why I had been unable to locate a particular person in the 1911 census; I thought I was looking in the right place, but there were actually several places with the same address!

The curves of the Bow added their own complicating factors. Initially the Bow River formed the northern city boundary and was the starting point for the numbering of avenues. Once the city expanded north of the river, the city fathers had a dilemma to solve. They could not have avenues with negative numbers, so they decided to switch to a quadrant system of numbering, with the Bow River as the north-south center line. However, the undulating river intersected the grid of roadways several times. This would cause portions of a straight avenue to have the same number but different quadrants, depending on which bank of the river it was on. To ease the confusion, avenues in this chaotic zone were given names instead of numbers.

Memorial Drive, the road following the curves along the north bank of the Bow, once had many different named segments, then after WWI one of those segments had a row of poplars planted in memory of the fallen citizens of the city and became known as Memorial Drive. This name was then generalized to more of the portions until it reached today’s extent.

Doug Coats gave many more examples and a fuller explanation of the foibles of Calgary’s roadway development, but I hope you can understand the main ideas. There are many forces which shape the development of city roadways over time and this can lead to apparently illogical arrangements and naming patterns. When doing historic research, remember that today’s map is not just an extension of yesterday’s, but could be the result of many changes in organization. Try to find an accurate map for the period you are researching.

So, when you are lost out there, despite having followed the directions on your GPS or cell phone, don’t be afraid of a detour; take the scenic route and discover something new.

This article was originally printed in the Bergen News and is being reprinted with permission.

 

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