DISTRICTS, VILLAGES and POINTS OF INTEREST
Township 53-Range 3 -West of the 5th Township 53-Range 4 -West of the 5th Township 53-Range 5 -West of the 5th Township 54-Range 3 -West of the 5th Township 54-Range 4 -West of the 5th Township 54-Range 5 -West of the 5th WHITE WHALE LAKE CENSUS - 1901
SOLDIERS OF THE GREAT WAR - 1914-1918
"HILLS OF HOPE" -Local history book on line. Published by Carvel Unifarm, 1976.
Alberta is mapped on a grid system (the Dominion Land Survey - 1869) into numbered townships of 36 square miles (6 mi. x 6mi.).
Each township is numbered from 1, at the 49th parallel (USA border) and going north to the 60th parallel (NWT border), therefore all townships between parallel 53 and 54 are called Township 53.
Each township is located by range lines counted west from the meridians.
The Town of Stony Plain is located on the 5th meridian(114 degrees 00 minutes west of Greenwich, surveyed 1879-80), 1 mile south of Highway 16A, which is on the 53rd parallel (14th Baseline, surveyed 1878. Baselines are 24 miles apart.) at that point.
The 5th meridian is also the first range line, so the township west of it and north of Highway 16A is Township 53, Range 1, West of the 5th meridian. Six miles west of it is Range 2, six miles west of that is Range 3, where the "Land Between the Lakes" begins. (arbitrarily) It ends, (again arbitrarily), at Range Line 6, the west end of Lake Wabamun.
Confused yet?
Each township is divided into 36 one square mile sections each 5280 feet by 5280 feet, containing 640 acres.
The sections are numbered beginning at the southeast corner being section 1, proceeding west to section 6, then north to section 7, then east to section 12, north to 13, and continuing in this manner to the north east corner which is section 36.
The North/South dividing line between each of the sections is a 66 foot wide government road allowance, the East/West line between every second section is also a road allowance, thus no spot on the map should ever be further than 2640 feet from a government road.
Each section is divided into four quarters each 2640 feet on each side, which are named by their compass direction from the centre of the section. (NW, NE, SE, SW). This was the standard homestead size during the early times. As a general rule people tried to file on quarters which had no contiguous neighbours, figuring that once they had "proved up" the original homestead and acquired title to it they could apply for the contiguous land for expansion of their farmland.
Some sections were also divided into 16 Legal Subdivisions (LS), each 1320 feet per side, numbered from the southeast corner being #1, west to #4, north to #5, east to #8, north to #9, etc. There were thus four LS's in each quarter.
Thus to locate any point in the prairie provinces to within 660 feet, one needs a map and a "land description", a series of numbers and letters describing the location.
The Transalta Utilities Power Generating Station west of Wabamun would be located as:
SW 11-53-4-W5
or: The Southwest quarter of Section 11 in Township 53 west of Range Line 4 West of the 5th Meridian.
Or you could just go look. It's big, it's beside a lake, you can't miss it.
To locate any place within the "Land Between the Lakes" you will need a map of the County of Parkland and a map of the County of Lac. Ste. Anne.
Vision of an Ordered Land - (The story of the Dominion Land Survey) - James G. MacGregor
Western Producer Prairie Books - 1981
The Pioneer Years - Barry Broadfoot
1976, Doubleday, Canada
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