Digital Historical Street Network for Waterloo County

In 2011, the staff in the University Map Library re-constructed the 1955 street network for Waterloo County. These streets are made freely available in digital map format, GIS Shapefiles and KML files, allowing scholars, historians and community residents to study and analyze past and present street patterns. 

We have discovered some interesting finds with respect to changes to city boundaries, urban growth, and street names.  The following examples are best viewed in Firefox.

• Urban built-up areas expanded dramatically in the past half century
  • Urban built up area increased by 537%, from 38km2 in 1955 to 202 km2 in 2011.  The rapid urban expansion mostly occurred in the suburbs.
• A significant increase of the road network
• Between 1955 and 2011, the total road length for the Region of Waterloo has increased from 2175 km to 3626 km, an increase of 66%.
• Most of the new roads were built in the suburban areas of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo (from 813 km to 2073 km).
• Rural towns were much less developed in 1955(e.g. Heidelberg).

• Many country and farm roads either disappeared or changed shape

• In built-up areas, the street network largely remains the same; however some street names have changed
• Part of University Avenue was named Dearborn Street, located across the south campus (Dana Porter Library, Needles Hall) until Ring Road; Only a small section of Dearborn Street close to railway remains as a trail
• Street name changes were necessary when two country roads were connected to create a new road (e.g. Dearborn St and Schneider’s Rd were renamed University Ave.)
• Having historical street names available allows one to pinpoint historical locations like the boardroom of Waterloo College at Dearborn & Albert

• New roads were built in the rural areas along rural/farm roads.  Sometimes a small part of these old roads remains today as trails.

You may download the street shapefiles or KML files for your own use.

If you would like access to historical air photos of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, please visit our Historical Air Photo Digitization Project website.

Please email any questions, comments or suggestions to :

Eva Dodsworth, Geospatial Data Services Librarian

University Map Library, 2011

University of Waterloo Library
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
519 888 4883

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