City of Peoria v. Johnston

Citations

• 56 Ill. 45

Syllabus

<p>1. Dedication—for apublia highway—what constitutes. The owner of land at the terminus of a street in a town, laid off an addition to the town, extending from its original limits along on one side of a public road which run through his land, and was a continuation of the street, in the same general direction, but not-so wide as the street. He made a= plat of the addition, which was duly recorded, and on which were lines indicating an extension of the street, but specifying no particular width therefor. The other streets in the addition were made of the same width with corresponding streets in the original town. In the year after laying out the addition, he sold and conveyed that portion of his land which lay on the side of the street first mentioned, opposite the addition, his grantee taking immediate possession and erecting a fence on the line of the original highway. This was in 1843, and the city, for a period of twenty-eight years, acquiesced in such assertion of ownership and continued occupancy of the purchaser and his grantees, in 1847 recognizing by ordinance the fence as the true line of the street, and again in 1857 appointing commissioners to assess the damages for condemning a strip of land inside this fence, which were assessed but never paid. After the lapse of twenty-eight years from the time such purchaser took possession, the city claimed the right to appropriate a strip of his land inside the fence for the purposes of the street, alleging a dedication thereof on the plat of the addition, made by the original owner: Held, the circumstances connected with the laying off the addition and making of the plat left the question of dedication in doubt; but the doubt was resolved against the city, in view of the additional circumstances that individual ownership was asserted and exclusive possession taken the first year after the alleged dedication, and that the city had for twenty-eight years both positively recognized and passively acquiesced in such a