 Kawartha Lakes Municipal Road 35 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Route information | ||||
| Maintained by city of Kawartha Lakes | ||||
| Length | 30.5 km[1] (19.0 mi) | |||
| Major junctions | ||||
| South end |  Road 8 (Glenarm Road) | |||
| Major intersections |  Road 48 | |||
| North end |  Road 45 (Monck Road) | |||
| Location | ||||
| Country | Canada | |||
| Province | Ontario | |||
| Counties | Kawartha Lakes | |||
| Villages | Glenarm,Victoria Road,Uphill | |||
| Highway system | ||||
| ||||
Kawartha Lakes Road 35, also known asVictoria Road andFennel Road, is amunicipally maintained road located in the city ofKawartha Lakes, in theCanadian province ofOntario. The road is mostly straight, running in a north–south orientation throughout its length. It began at the hamlet ofGlenarm and travels 30.5 kilometres (19.0 mi) toUphill.
The road was constructed in the 1850s as the VictoriaColonization Road in an effort to settle the southern fringe of theCanadian Shield. The northern half was designated asSecondary Highway 505 until 1998, when it became part of Kawartha Lakes Road 35.
Kawartha Lakes Road 35 is a straight road, and only deviates north of theHead River. The road runs in a predominantly north–south direction and covers a distance of 30.5 kilometres (19.0 mi).[1][2]The road crosses primarily rural geography, with the exception of the threeunincorporated communities: Glenarm,Victoria Road and Uphill.[2]
The route begins in the hamlet of Glenarm at an intersection withKawartha Lakes Road 8 (Glenarm Road) and runs between farms for most of its length; the occasional forest breaks the farmland. The road crosses theTrent-Severn Waterway and intersectsKawartha Lakes Road 48 (formerlyHighway 48). The 18.7-kilometre (12 mi) road north of this point was known as Highway 505[3]until January 1, 1998, when it was downloaded toVictoria County and was numbered as County Road 35. This was changed to Kawartha Lakes Road 35 on January 1, 2001, when Victoria County became the city of Kawartha Lakes.[4]
The road continues to the village ofVictoria Road. North of this point, the road is on a lower maintenance priority,[5]and pavement conditions quickly deteriorate. It continues until reaching the Digby–Laxton Boundary Road. The highway descends into the Head River valley, crosses the river and begins to wind through thick coniferous forest. As it rises out of the valley, now in the Canadian Shield, the route becomes very narrow and features several blind turns before ending in Uphill at Kawartha Lakes Road 45.[1]
During the early-1800s, the government ofUpper Canada, a majority of which is now Ontario, appropriated settlers to various lots which had been surveyed along the lake shores ofLake Erie andLake Ontario. The townships established along thesefronts contained generally fertile land composed ofglacial till and clay-richloam. As these townships filled up, business opportunities presented themselves for investors to purchasenative lands and open them to settlement.The Canada Company was the most successful of these ventures, and attracted settlers to vast areas of land inWestern Ontario by building routes such as theHuron Road and theToronto–Sydenham Road during the 1830s and 1840s.[6] As these areas too filled, the government came under pressure to open up the unforgiving terrain of theCanadian Shield to settlement, and sought to establish a network of east–west and north–south roads between theOttawa Valley andGeorgian Bay. This area was known as theOttawa–Huron Tract.[7]
In 1847, an explorationsurvey was carried out byRobert Bell to lay out the lines that would become the Opeongo Road, Hastings Road and Addington Road. The Public Lands Act, passed in 1853, permitted the granting of land to settlers who were at least 18. Those settlers who cleared at least 12 acres (49,000 m2) within four years, built a house within a year and resided on the grant for at least five years would receive the title to that land. The government subsequently built over 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) of roads over the following 20 years to provide access to these grants.[8]
However, the promises of fertile land in this new northern tract of wilderness proved false. Beneath thin layers of sparsely spread soil was solid granite. Where this granite descended deeper, valleys formed and filled withmuskeg. Despite an early influx of settlers, the vast majority of grants were abandoned by the turn of the century; only 40% remained. During the first half of the 1900s, many of these colonization roads were incorporated into the growingprovincial highway network. Some sections were improved to modern highway standards, while others were subsequentlybypassed or abandoned. The roads that were not incorporated as highways either became local roads or were consumed by nature.[9]
The Victoria Road is one of several such colonization roads built in the 1850s to promote settlement in what was then the frontier of Ontario. The road continued north of its current terminus in Uphill into what is now theQueen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park. It then followed the Black River north-east to thePeterson Road inVankoughnet; this part of the road fell into disuse by the turn of the century.[10]
In 1956, theDepartment of Highways assumed a portion of the Victoria Road between what was thenHighway 46 (Highway 48 between 1975 and 1998) andHighway 503 was designated as Secondary Highway 505.[11][12]It retained this designation and remained unchanged until January 1, 1998, when the entire route was designated as Victoria County Road 35. Victoria County was restructured as the cityKawartha Lakes on January 1, 2001, which resulted in the road being renamed Kawartha Lakes Road 35.[4][13]
The following table lists the major junctions along Kawartha Lakes Road 35.[1] The entire route is located in Kawartha Lakes.[13]
| Location | km[1] | mi | Destinations | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glenarm | 0.0 | 0.0 | Road 8 (Glenarm Road) | ||
| 11.5 | 7.1 | Road 48 (Portage Road) | Kawartha Lakes Road 35 is known asVictoria Road north of this junction, and asFennel Road south of it. | ||
| Victoria Road | 13.4 | 8.3 | Blanchard's Road (east) Talbot River Road (west) | ||
| Uphill | 30.5 | 19.0 | Road 45 (Monck Road) | Northern terminus of Kawartha Lakes Road 35; formerlyHighway 503 | |
| 1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi | |||||
Two new Ontario road numbers appear on the province's 1956 official road map which will be ready for distribution next week. The new numbers are the 500 and 600 series and designate hundreds of miles of secondary roads which are wholly maintained by the Highways Department. More than 100 secondary roads will have their own numbers and signs this year. All of these secondary roads were taken into the province's main highways system because they form important connecting links with the King's Highways
