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1859 Map

click on map for larger image
The lay of the land, or at least land-ownership in 1859. The Binkley Property with Ancaster Creek (then AKA Red Creek) snaking through it, just over 100 years before McMaster would fill in the floodplain for parking.

Interesting to note "Binkley Road" heading out of Dundas, and the extent of the marsh into Dundas, later filled in to create Cootes Drive in 1936-37.

The Binkley Road is likely the road known as Peer's Road, built in 1818, which I encountered in my research on Cootes Drive. Peer's Road followed
"Dundas Street to Thorpe Street, south across the creek to the foot of the hill, diagonally up the hill to the east reaching the top at the rear of St. Augustine's Cemetery, south along the rear of the cemetery to Desjardins avenue, thence across Binkley's Hollow to join the present Hamilton-Brantford road near what we would recognize as the T.H. & B. Railway bridge, now used by rail trail travellers over Main West." (Woodhouse, History of the Town of Dundas -Part 1, 1965, p.29)
The "Samuel Forsyth" property is now the location of McMaster University if that helps you get your bearings. Dundas is at the head of the long marsh, at the lower end of the Binkley Road.

Note too that this pre-dates the rail-line from Dundas to Hamilton, so you can still see the pre-straightened "wiggle" in Spencer Creek (then AKA Black Creek) just east of the town as it heads into the marsh.

To the top left of the image, you can see that Chedoke Creek was a big wetland well before it was destroyed in the making of Highway 403 (The Chedoke Expressay) in the early 1970s.

Sigh.
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