(Edouard Gaston Daniel) Deville Era: Survey of the Western Interior of Canada‪.‬

A trip through the countryside of south-central Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba reveals a consistent pattern of roads, fields, and fences. A regular grid of road allowances, running north-south and east-west at one or two mile intervals is a most noticeable feature. Fence lines divide farmers' fields into quarter sections and mark the limits of public roads. Signs at many intersections give locations by township and range road numbers. If one flies over the region, the regular checkerboard pattern of land division with intervening road allowances is even more apparent. Astronauts orbiting the earth have remarked that only two visible features reveal that earth is inhabited by man; one is the Great Wall of China and the other is the regular land division pattern over much of North America. This orderly pattern over the western interior of Canada is the largest land survey grid ever laid down under a single integrated system. Known as the Dominion Lands Survey System, it established the boundaries for quarter section sized homesteads in western Canada's formative years, eventually covering over 200 million acres or 312,500 square miles, almost one-tenth of the entire land area of Canada. The system provided the indispensable framework for orderly land settlement. Its purpose was to establish a system of land holdings to enable settlers to take up their choice of property upon arrival in the West, and feel assured of a clear, firm title to that land. The system was so practical and readily understood that it remains today as the basis for land boundaries and titles to land throughout the West. Land grants to homesteaders and to the Canadian Pacific Railway were based on the 1/2 mile square, 160 acre quarter sections. But first they had to be surveyed and marked on the ground and titles issued for them to avoid large scale squatting on federal public (Crown) lands and to provide control for their disposition.