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By 1874, when Grigg was chairman and the need for roads and drainage at Longbeach and Lowcliffe was constantly before members, the board had its hands full with the management of the township. Drains had to be dug, roads constructed not merely formed, and sanitary regulations issued controlling cess-pits and the keeping of pigs. Thomas Bullock obtained permission to erect the first shop verandah on East Street, and the first charges of riding on the footpath were brought before the magistrate.

The Provincial Government had established road boards at least partly in the hope that localities would rate themselves for their own advantage. At that time there was no direct taxation of any sort, and for that reason rates were regarded with abhorrence. But when the need for roads was particularly evident and provincial funds were low and grants negligible, rating was acceptable as long as the ratepayer benefited immediately. By 1870, however, it became clear to landowners on the upper plains that they were paying for the development of the main south road and other roads outside their area. TLhey therefore secured a separate district for themselves by the simple means of a petition of a majority of ratepayers. The new Mount Somers road district thus formed lay west of a line passing through the present Ruapuna, Mayfield, Punawai and Lyndhurst.

The first board of the new district consisted of Charles Hurst, Isaac Taylor, Andrew McFarlane, W. S. Peter of Anama, and W. C. Walker of Mt Possession. Hurst, the first chairman, was a Yorkshireman who had managed a South Australian run before he came to New Zealand. He arrived in Canterbury in 1857 and in the same year acquired the Valetta run. He made a name for himself and a reputation for the station by supplying the Christchurch market with some of the best wethers seen there, and winning prizes for his merinos at the show of 1870. It is said he bought Oakleigh run, north of the Rakaia, in 1866.^[1] But he almost certainly did not leave Valetta until 1872, just after he had bought a farm on the Selwyn River. Taylor, who had sold Winterslow to Graham, was probably at this time on Stronechrubie, which was called Mount Sunday. He later held Buccleuch. McFarlane who went to Alford Forest in 1861^[2] became a large landowner, and long before he died in 1926 was regarded as ‘the father of Mount