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Banks Peninsula and Waimate followed suit, and Canterbury split into six counties.

The local representatives who played a leading part in arriving at this decision were the chairmen of the road boards. The Canterbury Provincial Council first formed these boards in 1863 to take over all the minor public works in their districts. The council voted grants to the boards which came to consider they had a right to one-quarter of receipts from land sold in each district.

The boundaries of the Ashburton road district were the Rakaia, Havelock and Rangitata rivers and the sea, almost those of the present (1971) county. On 2 February 1864 the electors and householders of this district met at Turton’s Inn to choose a board—or rather six of them did. As all but one of these six stalwarts had ridden at least twenty miles to attend—W. S. Peter from Anama, Charles Percy Cox from Mount Somers, Captain John McLean from Buccleuch, W. C. Walker from the Ashburton Gorge and Alexander Lean from Mount Hutt—the motion they passed scolding their fellow electors for their lack of interest may not have been framed too light-heartedly. Thomas Moorhouse the other one who attended lived close at hand at the Ashburton homestead. These six enthusiasts nevertheless proceeded to select five members for the board: Lean, Cox, Park of Winchmore, Chapman of Acton and Dr Benjamin Moorhouse of Shepherds Bush.

Alexander Lean was an early runholder who had held Lendon (Corwar) and Mount Hutt stations from 1853 and 1855 respectively. He resigned from the board in 1865 because he was forced to sell his leases. Having been trained as an architect, he then became permanent secretary in the provincial Public Works Department, though he was best known in Christchurch for his leadership in military and musical affairs.

Percy Cox had been a partner in Longbeach run with the then provincial Superintendent, James Edward FitzGerald. He next bought Mount Somers from his brother-in-law, Tripp. He barely survived the slump of the 1860s. Indeed, Chudleigh^[1] recorded in his diary in 1865 that Cox ‘. . . has sunk a good fortune in Mount Somers, has made a lovely place and now has to sell it house and all’. Apparently the land buying of 1875 finally defeated him. He sold in 1876 to his nephew, Alfred Edward Peache, and went into land agency and other business.^[2]