Fleetwood

By Guy Scott

A group of Irish settlers settled along Fleetwood Creek near Mount Horeb in the 1840s. The hamlet of Fleetwood was started at an eligible mill site on Fleetwood Creek. A town plot was laid out and soon two general stores, a blacksmith, a sawmill, a hotel, a church and a school. Fleetwood was the name of a village in Ireland where the first settlers originated. A cheese factory opened in 1890.

Fleetwood was a prosperous hamlet in the late 1800s, boasting a telephone exchange, a farm machinery dealership and its own doctor! But the one ticket to prosperity it lacked was a railway station. The Grand Trunk Railway pushed a line through the area, but bypassed Fleetwood in favour of the hamlet of Franklin, further east. Fleetwood stagnated and began to decline. A later railway added a siding 6 miles away called Fleetwood Station, but was too far away to offer much service. Soon the hamlet declined as the business sector diminished and the railways were lifted. The Post Office closed in 1914 as rural mail delivery was started. The Church and the school closed and only the schoolhouse remains as a residence, making it a ghost town.