Turtle Talk

In a property dispute between three tenants-in-common families (Durfelds, Sowdens, and Kurkiniemis) who were in the process of partitioning a 12 acre lot on Williams Lake in British Columbia, one of the families (Sowdens) contested the placement of a public access road.  Why?  Because the placement of the road in the proposed area would result in their property beginning 20 meters to the east, forcing them to spend a lot of money to allow them to build over “quiggly holes,”  aboriginal, archaeological underground houses.

Here’s an interesting site describing quiggly holes.

20          The Sowdens submit that they would be unduly prejudiced if this was the public access route because it would mean that the usable portion of their property would begin 20 meters to the east. If they chose to build, this would result in them having to approach an aboriginal archaeological site on which a number of cultural depressions (also known as quiggly holes) are located. The Sowdens submit that they want to build a large home near the water and if they were forced 20 meters to the east, they would be required to incur substantial expense in the form of mitigation work necessary to permit them to build over the cultural depressions.