DCHP-1 Online

portage road

• 1a a road used for portaging boats and cargo by means of vehicles.

  • 1801  Whoever shall find the same and leave it at either the public houses on the portage road from Queenston to Chippawa, shall receive five dollars for their trouble.
  • 1868  Grain portage roads . . . are called for in consequence of the break in lake navigation, caused by the Niagara Falls.
  • 1952  At Fort Fitzgerald, Alberta, goods are transhipped on trucks and trailers over the portage roads to the head of northern water transportation at Fort Smith.
  • 1963  The Rangers began the road system Simcoe planned: the portage road, or Dundas Street, from BBurlington . . . to . . . the Thames.

• 1b Hist. an overland route for York boats and other heavy boats, often equipped with roller-ways.

  • 1852  Owing to the shallowness of the streams, and badness of the portage roads over the heights between Lake Superior and Rainy Lake, the transport of goods requires to be performed in canoes, with much manual labor, and is, consequently, very expensive.
  • 1897  It would be better if the traveller should portage here, the miners having constructed a portage road on the west side and put down roller-ways in some places on which they roll their boats over.
  • 1928  The rotting logs of the old portage road of the voyageurs are covered by the high fill which forms the southern approach to the bridge.

• 1c a path followed by persons making a portage (def. 2a).

  See also: portage ((n.)) (def. 2a)  portage path  

  • 1831, 1290  To surmount these, a good portage road has been formed north of the channel, through a stony hard-wood tract, in which three small lakes are crossed.
  • 1903  . . . the nearer or right passage led by a winding route to a rocky cove at the beginning of the portage road.
  • 1961  . . . the main street of this community [Pembroke] was for some time a portage road.

• 2 Maritimes, Hist. a trail or path through the bush; a bush road, especially a logging road.

  See also: portage ((n.)) (def. 8 and note)  

  • 1815  There is an Indian footpath or portage road of eleven miles to the Grand River, which flows into the River St. John.
  • 1902  Perhaps the best district for partridges and woodcock is that between Bass River andTabusintac, in the vicinity of the Miramichi highway, and the portage roads leading off it.

• 3 Hist. See portage railroad 1958 quote.

  See also: portage railroad (1958 quote)  

  • 1916  This portage road promised to shorten materially the journey from Montreal to New York.
  • 1946  It became a portage road across from Lake Ontario to the Georgian Bay.