Victoria Park, Urban park and heritage resource in Charlottetown, Canada.
Victoria Park is a waterfront park west of Charlottetown's original 500 lots, with about 1.5 km of shore frontage. Its shoreline runs from a cove fed by the buried Spring Park Brook, past Battery Point in the middle, to Duchess Point in the southwest. A roadway built in 1897 and 1903 follows the shore, and Memorial Field, tennis courts, a pool and a playground lie inland.
Governor Edmund Fanning set aside 100 acres west of Charlottetown's original 500 lots in 1789 as farmland and a site for an official residence; Government House opened there in December 1834. In 1869 the colonial government judged 30 acres enough for Government House and released 40 acres to the public. On 14 June 1873, 16 days before the colony joined Canada, Governor William Cleaver Francis Robinson vested those 40 acres in the City as a park, promenade and pleasure ground, soon named for Queen Victoria. Britain's 1905 withdrawal added the 16 acres around the Prince Edward Battery.
The park's name honours Queen Victoria, assigned shortly after the 1873 transfer. The caretaker's cottage built in the early 20th century for a park warden, usually a military veteran, now serves as a pottery studio. The Kiwanis Club opened an ice cream parlour in 1955 as a fundraising enterprise.
Victoria Park Roadway follows the shore from Government Pond past the Prince Edward Battery to Duchess Point, then north to Brighton Road; the whole route was surfaced with gravel in 1925. The Victoria Park Driveway, a service road, leaves Brighton Road and runs south to the battery, cutting the park in two. The eastern roadway section opened in 1897 for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, after a legal dispute between the Lieutenant-Governor and the city.
Three stone survey markers set in 1820 by commissioners reporting magnetic declination to Governor Charles Douglass Smith still stand in a field just north of the Prince Edward Battery; a further set was placed at right angles in 1846. They mark the meridional line established by an 1809 Act of the Legislative Assembly.
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