During the early 1800s, the government of Upper Canada appropriated settlers to various lots which had been surveyed along the lake shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The townships established along these fronts contained generally fertile land composed of glacial till and clay-rich loam. As these townships filled up, business opportunities presented themselves for investors to purchase native lands and open them to settlement. The Canada Company was the most successful of these ventures and brought settlers to vast areas of land in Western Ontario by building routes such as Huron Road and Toronto–Sydenham Road during the 1830s and 1840s.