The entire Kawartha Lakes region rests upon the Canadian Shield—which forms the ancient core of the North American continent. However, over much of this area, other stones have been deposited on top of the Canadian Shield in the billions of years that have passed since it was formed. Geologists call the stones of the Canadian Shield Precambrian, after the era in which it was formed. It is the period beginning when the earth formed, and ending when plant and animal life proliferated across the globe about 538 million years ago.

The dividing line between the area where the Canadian Shield is the highest layer of bedrock and those where there are other stones on top runs roughly through Rama, Norland, Burnt River, Nogies Creek, then along the north shores of Pigeon, Lower Buckhorn, Stoney, Round, Belmont and Crowe Lakes—with the Canadian Shield to the north, and sedimentary stones to the south. During Ordovician Period (a time before dinosaurs, when the earth was very warm and had high sea levels), there was a sea covering this southern area, and these stones were the materials that accumulated on the sea floor. This boundary is complicated, and imperfect—there is exposed Precambrian bedrock south of the line and other stones deposited on top of the Shield north of the line.

Being an ancient mountain range—though severely eroded—Shield Country has tended to be a much more difficult area for people to make a living. Historically, it has been a challenging area to travel through—the ground is very undulating and only a portion can be reached via navigable waterways. In this area, it is unusual to find any large expanse of topsoil that is deep enough for agriculture, and rarer still for it to be flat. In its natural state much of the region supports mixed forests, on shallow soils, with different plants, animals and aquatic species. Parts of the region is rock barrens, and most of it is quite hilly.

Throughout human history in the Kawarthas, there has been a strong tendency for settlements to form on the waterway, south of Shield Country. The Michi Saagiig villages which formed in the eighteenth century were all on water, south of this dividing line. These communities typically used Shield Country seasonally for hunting, fishing and trapping. When large numbers of Europeans began to migrate to the region in the nineteenth century, the government of Upper Canada (later Ontario) did not initially recognize the importance of this natural boundary. As it surveyed the province, it assumed that practically all land would be farm land and attracted pioneer farmers to the region—in an era when many people in Great Britain and Ireland were looking for a place where they could make a living.

By the end of the nineteenth century, much of Shield Country had been settled for agriculture and the old growth forests had been harvested almost everywhere that a timber company could figure out how to float the logs to market. These two occupations supported each other, as the farms could supply provisions like hay that the logging camps needed. A job working in the woods helped the pioneer farmers get by. But it was very unusual for a farm to prosper in this region, and almost all of them reverted to forest in the twentieth century.

For centuries, Michi Saagiig have hunted, fished and trapped in Shield Country, and in the nineteenth century the immigrants to the region began doing the same. There were minerals to be found in the region, and there have been periodic mining booms and busts. With the advent of the railway, then the automobile, in the twentieth century, recreation became an increasingly important part of the local economy. Ever more people had the time and prosperity to enjoy the beauty of Shield Country without having to worry about how subsist off these rocky lands.

About 470-458 million years ago, the world was much warmer than it is today, and sea levels were much higher. Little of what is now North America, other than what is now Canadian Shield Country was dry land, and what is now the southern half of the Kawarthas was a relatively shallow sea. In this epoch, sediments deposited on the bottom of the sea, forming limestone, dolostone, arkose and sandstone. Once the seas receded, this region tended to be a lot flatter than the neighbouring mountains of Shield Country.

In the millions of years that have passed since then, the landscape has become much more complicated. Though it is still noticeably less undulating than the ancient mountains to the north, much of the Kawarthas have become rolling hills. For tens of thousands of years, the region was under an ice sheet, which at its maximum was about three kilometers thick—in the Kawarthas it is thought to have reached a maximum thickness of about 1500 metres—and when ice is that thick it moves under its own weight. Ridges of sand and gravel called eskers formed where rivers ran through or under glaciers. Elongated hills called drumlins formed as moving glaciers acted on the loose material below them—their long axis is parallel with the direction the ice was flowing. The region also includes two moraines, which are accumulations of glacial material more than 100 kilometres long. Excepting an area between Hartley and Lake Simcoe, there are few locations in the Kawarthas south of Shield Country where there is not some large glacial feature within five kilometres.

The ancient sea bed, called the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Lowlands is one of Canada’s most fertile and densely populated regions—as it has been for millennia. In the eighteenth century, Michi Saagiig villages grew on Rice, Chemong and Scugog Lakes. In the nineteenth century, as happened in Shield Country, the Crown parcelled off the overwhelming majority of land into agricultural lots. But unlike in Shield Country, in these lowlands, a large proportion of the family farms survived into the second half of the twentieth century. Since then, many have been consolidated into larger farming operations.

The landforms left behind at the end of the last glaciation still shape how humans use the region. Farming on the moraines proved much more difficult than other spots where less aggregate was deposited by the glaciers. The eskers tended not to be suitable for farming at all, but many produce sand and gravel. Today the region is still largely an agricultural landscape. It is a very complicated countryside of farms, forests, river valleys, and wetlands, surrounding a waterway, that reflects the equally complicated drainage patters that were left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

The Oak Ridges Moraine is one of the most recognizable landforms in Southern Ontario. This ridge is about 160 kilometres long, running roughly parallel with the north shore of Lake Ontario at a distance of about 15 kilometres. Spanning from the Niagara Escarpment in the west to the Trent River in the east, countless motorists drive over the ridge each day, without thinking twice about what they have encountered—whether on Highway 400, 11, 404, 12, 35 or 28. It passes south of Lake Simcoe, Lake Scugog and Rice Lake. Though it runs close to Rice Lake, the ridge is about 120 metres above the surface of the waterbody. Elsewhere it reaches 200 meters above the surrounding land, being highest near Uxbridge.  It is a complicated landform, that is often divided into four elevated wedges: Albion, Uxbridge, Pontypool and Rice Lake—each of which has their own history.

The Oak Ridges Moraine was formed during the last glacial period and there have been many theories posited over the years about how it was created. Many of the earlier theories suggested that it was formed when two lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet met—the Lake Simcoe lobe on the north side and the Lake Ontario lobe on the south. Some geologists believed that the Lake Simcoe Lobe expanded over the Oak Ridges Moraine, while others differed. Other theories emerged that the oldest parts of the moraine were formed by a stream running underneath a glacier, likely early in the glacial period. More detailed examinations have found that there are many different types of glacial deposits found in the moraine—formed under a glacier, at the edge of a glacier, and from a glacial lake. It is comprised of many smaller deposits, each with their own history, woven together to form a very complicated ridge.

The Oak Ridges Moraine blocked many of the rivers that had once drained south-central Ontario, leading to the creation of many of the inland lakes, including the Kawarthas and Lake Simcoe. Instead of draining to the south, these watercourses had to find new outlets by travelling around the ridge. As these watercourses were blocked, the Oak Ridges Moraine became the headwaters of many of these creeks.

Being a massive accumulation of sand, silt, clay and stone, the soils of Oak Ridges Moraine tend to drain much more rapidly than some of the surrounding lowlands. Local Michi Saagiig called it a mskode—a term associated with prairies, plains, clearings and fire. Their communities maintained clearings with fire, and would harvest blueberries, huckleberries and woodland sunflowers. The English name derives from the high proportion of oaks found there. Catherine Parr Traill described the Rice Lake Plains in 1832 as “a fine elevation of land—for many miles scantily clothed with oaks, and here and there bushy pines, with other trees and shrubs… with trees growing in groups, or singly, at considerable intervals, giving a sort of park-like appearance to this portion of the country.” At the time that she was observing it, the red pine, cedar, oaks, shagbark hickory, dwarf cherries, juneberries, and willows often showed signs of fire.

The Oak Ridges Moraine is home to many different ecosystems. It contains wetlands that resemble those found in the boreal forests that are common in Northern Ontario. There are savannahs containing a high proportion of oaks and pines. It includes tallgrass prairies, with many plants characteristic of prairies. Its fauna include elk, prairie chickens, and blue racer snakes—species that are unusual in southern Ontario.

As thousands of European immigrants moved to the region, expecting to create farms from the forest, the Oak Ridges Moraine was comprised of challenging environments. Though it could support livestock, much of it was not suited to tillage, especially with the machinery of the twentieth century. Parts of the moraine were reforested with plantations that at the time were intended for subsequent harvest.

As Toronto was growing into a metropolis in the late twentieth century, the Oak Ridges Moraine became increasingly associated with “nature,” as many people enjoyed hiking, skiing or snowshoeing along its trails. It became home to camps and accommodations. As debates raged over urban sprawl, many people sought to preserve its ecosystems and aquifers. The Jefferson salamander, an endangered species, became a symbol of what could be lost if it was further developed.

The Kawartha Lakes are situated between two long belts of material deposited by glaciers, called moraines—that both run roughly east to west. To the south of the lakes, the Oak Ridges Moraine is a lengthy ridge. The Dummer Moraine, which lies north of the lakes is much wider, and consists of hummocky hills. Whereas the Oak Ridges Moraine is a single, massive ridge, the Dummer Moraine consists of many ridges, typically running northwest to southeast. Its southern boundary is often difficult to define precisely, as it meets the rolling hills of the Peterborough Drumlin Field—a distinctive local landscape that can be seen between Omemee and Peterborough. While the continuous Oak Ridges Moraine forced water courses around it, the Dummer Moraine reconfigured watercourses to run amidst its hills.

For geologists recognizing the Dummer Moraine and mapping its extent is relatively straightforward. It is more than twenty kilometers wide in places, and about 180 kilometers long—roughly from Coboconk to Sydenham. Much of the undulating terrain of Somerville, Verulam and Dummer Townships to name a few exemplify this land form. Along this band, much of the land consists of rolling hills comprised of sand, gravel and stone—including considerable quantities of broken limestone rubble, interspersed with swampy lowlands. Many of the stones are ones that can be found locally, interspersed with Precambrian boulders. The limestone bedrock in this region is similar to that which is found in the Carden Alvar, but in many locations is overlain by deposited sand, gravel and stone, in mounds that create hills of up to 125 feet in height. There are tremendous variations in the landscape over relatively short distances. The kind of material found while digging a hole in one location may not be indicative of what will be found even two hundred metres away in any direction. Though geologists agree that it seems to be of glacial origin, there are different theories of how it formed.

Perhaps the Dummer Moraine formed when part of the glacier broke off and melted in place. Or maybe the glacier stood still in this location. Others suggest that it was created by the glacier’s readvance, suggesting that since the ridges tend to lie across the path of glacial travel, they were created when the advancing glacier pushed up material as it moved. Another theory suggests that it may have been formed by the glacier picking up stone off escarpment (i.e. cliff) faces, and materials deposited in meltwaters under the glacier. Whatever its origins, the spillways, gravel and sand deposits that are part of the moraine suggest that flowing glacial water contributed to its formation. It has been suggested that it is between 12,500 and 12,000 years old.

The soils on the Dummer Moraine tend to be shallow, but they do support mixed forests. In the early nineteenth century, maple, basswood, pine and hemlock were common in uplands; cedar, tamarack and black ash in swampy areas; with elm common in both wetter and drier areas. The forests that have regrown since the land was cleared for agriculture more commonly include aspen, birch and ash (at least until the emerald ash borer arrived!). Though sand and gravel are plentiful, in many locations the aggregates are not economical to extract because of the high proportion of silt and clay.

The Dummer Moraine tends to be a challenging area for modern agriculture. In the nineteenth century, the area was divided into agricultural lots and practically every lot had an immigrant family living on it—often without realizing the nature of the land that they had chosen. There were large portions of the British Isles that had been farmed for centuries, that presented similarly challenging landscapes. On many lots farm families did make a living for generations—but few became wealthy from farming these shallow soils. In the nineteenth century, there were many mixed farms on the Dummer Moraine—growing a few acres of wheat, potatoes, with a vegetable garden, and a variety of livestock. In the twentieth century, as mechanization and specialization became the norm, a low proportion of this region was suitable for mechanized tilling. Many farms became hay fields or pastures, in contrast to the cash crops that were more common further south. Especially since 1950, many farms have reverted to forest.

Have you ever travelled into Kirkfield on Kirkfield Road (#6) and noticed that there is something different about the hill as you descend into the village from the south? As you stand on top of that hill, facing towards Kirkfield, you are looking out over an ancient glacial spillway.

About 11,500 to 12,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet had recently retreated north (recently relative to the speed at which glaciers move, on a human timescale it would have seemed like an eternity), exposing regions that had been buried under ice for millennia. In the centuries that followed vegetation and animals migrated north into these barren regions, which were on the shores of Great Lake Algonquin. It had been formed by great volumes of meltwater coming off the glacier. It was an enormous lake, containing what is now Lakes Nipigon, Superior, Huron, Michigan and Simcoe.

Today, Kirkfield is the height of land, separating the Trent from the Severn Watershed. At the end of the last glacial period, it was on the edge of the glacial lake, where it narrowed into a channel, flowing downstream towards Lake Iroquois (which was in the basin that now contains Lake Ontario, but was also much larger). This channel or spillway was a fast-flowing river—imagine the Niagara River near Niagara Falls, just many times larger, perhaps with chunks of ice floating downstream. As the glacier continued to retreat northwards and the lake diminished, the land in the region slowly rebounded upwards (the incredible weight of glaciers forces the surface of the earth downwards). What was once a huge river conveying incredible quantities of water downstream became the valley where the village of Kirkfield grew in much more recent times.

At the end of the last glaciation, a great lake extended hundreds of kilometres to the northwest of Kirkfield, narrowing into a channel there, then at Fenelon Falls the waterway narrowed further as it carved a gorge through the limestone bedrock below the falls. Today, Fenelon Falls is a small placid waterfall, with relatively little water flowing over it relative to the size of the cataract that is one of the most photogenic vistas in the region. 11,500 or 12,000 years ago, it must have been a different sight entirely, when a river larger than any that exists in Ontario today surged through the village.

For a period of time, Fenelon Falls was the sill that controlled the height of all of this water pouring over it, as this sill was eroded to its present size and location, leaving behind the Fenelon Gorge. In this period when Fenelon Falls was draining a glacial great lake, the river was much wider than it is today, which would have also eroded the materials that were once in its path. Today, much of Fenelon Falls near the waterway has little topsoil covering shale or limestone bedrock, having once been the bed of a massive, fast-flowing river just above a waterfall.

According geological theories of how the Kawartha Lakes developed, before the last glaciation—possibly long before the last glaciation, there were once rivers draining the region, which is today characterized by its famous chain of lakes. The principal river flowed along a course occupied today by Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. After bending to the north, its drainage system occupied the valleys which now contain Kempenfelt Bay and Cooks Bay (parts of Lake Simcoe). A tributary to this Laurentian River stretched east, then north through what is now Lake Dalrymple, which has been named the “Dalrymple River.” The “Norland River” was a tributary of this river, which extended to the east, passing close to the village for which it was named, before following the course of Union Creek.

Another river flowed from Four Mile Lake, through Corben Creek, southeast of Grand Island in Balsam Lake, extending south through McLaren’s Creek. It met another channel that drained what has become the Northeast arm of Sturgeon Lake and the lower Burnt River. Another tributary, the “Emily River” extended up Emily Creek to the present location of Emily Lake. Once these branches met, this “Stony River” followed a course similar to the Scugog River through Lindsay. Tributaries extended from the vicinity of Lake Scugog north east into the basins that are now occupied by Pigeon Lake (including tributaries draining Nogies Creek, and the chain of lakes from Buckhorn east to Stony Lake) and Chemong Lakes. The Stony River continued to flow south, meeting the Laurentian River in what is today the Lake Ontario Basin. Subsequently, a different drainage system formed, with a river flowing through the valleys containing Clear, Katchewanooka, and Rice Lake, before heading south to into the Lake Ontario basin. A different drainage pattern also emerged to the west, as a new river replaced the Stony River, perhaps as a result of new landforms created during glaciation.

During the last glaciation, it has been proposed that the valleys that today contain the Kawartha Lakes tended to be eroded by glaciers and their meltwaters, while the area to the south tended to be an area where materials were deposited—notably including the Oak Ridges Moraine. As two lobes of the glacier met, this long ridge was deposited, running roughly parallel with the north shore of Lake Ontario. It has a very complicated history of different materials being deposited at different times.

Once the glacier had left behind the Oak Ridges Moraine and other sediments, the old river valleys could no longer drain. Instead, they became large ponds, which linked when a river system formed to drain Glacial Lake Algonquin (containing what is now Lakes Nipigon, Superior, Michigan, Huron and Simcoe). The tremendous flow of this river cut channels between these ponds that had formed in old river valleys, for instance at Rosedale. After the glaciation, a drainage system formed following its present course through Cameron and Sturgeon Lakes, east to Stony Lake, then south through Clear and Katchewanooka down the Otonabee River to Rice Lake. For a period of time, it also flowed through Dummer Lake, down the Indian River into Rice Lake. It then wound its way around the Oak Ridges Moraine to Lake Ontario.

At the start of the nineteenth century, before work began on the construction of the Trent-Severn Waterway, many of these lakes looked much like the rivers that they had once been than they do today. For instance, the northwest and south arms of Sturgeon Lake were both much narrower than at present, as was Pigeon Lake. To facilitate navigation in the region, water levels were significantly raised beginning in the 1830s—and are precisely maintained today—creating the Kawartha Lakes that most people take to be a ‘natural’ attraction.

Before the last glaciation, south central Ontario drained through many different streams and rivers, many flowing relatively directly to a watercourse where Lake Ontario is located today. Once the Oak Ridges Moraine was created—these rivers could no longer flow through the ancient valleys. Instead, a new route had to be found that travelled around the moraine. With all the meltwater coming off the ice sheet as it dissipated, there was plenty of flow to cut a new route travelling across the valleys. Since many of these former river valleys tended to flow north-south, an east-west route to travel around the moraine would inevitably be winding.

In terms of its meandering course and the number of cataracts, the Trent River was not that different than the other tributaries to the Great Lakes in the early nineteenth century—which were used locally as transportation routes. But to reach the upper Kawarthas, it was a very circuitous route. Local Michi Saagiig travelling from Lake Ontario to their villages at Rice Lake, Lake Scugog and Curve Lake tended to portage over the ridge to Rice Lake or Lake Scugog, rather than following the much longer water route. But once British immigrants started to arrive in the region, they were excited about the possibility of creating a waterway.

The first European settlements in the Kawartha Lakes region were founded in the same era that railways were invented in Great Britain. It would take a few years for this revolutionary technology to become common, and canals were the established mode of transportation. At that time in Britain, being on a canal was associated with prosperity—it was far more economical to import or export goods where improved transportation facilities existed. Unsurprisingly, the aspiring businessmen migrating to the Kawarthas (who also tended to be the prominent politicians), soon began to lobby the government to construct a through waterway linking Lake Ontario with Lake Huron. Given the tortuous route involved, it was not the shortest route between these lakes, nor the one that required the least improvements to create. But these boosters would insist for generations that it was the best route for through shipments—they stood to profit from it.

N.H. Baird completed a survey of the proposed Trent Canal route in 1835, estimating the cost at $1,167,236, which was easily enough to bankrupt the colony of Upper Canada. His plan overcome all the rapids and falls along the way was to build a dam at each, with a lock and canal around the obstruction—thought to be 43 locks. The first (dysfunctional) lock was already complete at Bobcaygeon, and within two years, a new round of construction began at Whitla’s Rapids (just below Peterborough), Lindsay, Hastings, Buckhorn, Healey Falls, Myers Island and Chisholm’s Rapids (Glen Ross). Most of these early projects were abandoned.

The colony created a Board of Works to continue work on dams, bridges and locks in the region and made incremental progress towards a through water route. Nevertheless, the Trent River became a practical transportation route for timber—the largest local export at the time. Before the Reciprocity Treaty between the Canadian colonies and the United States of America in 1854, exports were largely timbers headed for Britain. Ships’ masts were the most valuable export and they were incredible specimens—seventy five to a hundred and twenty feet tall, twenty four to forty inches at the base and at least eighteen inches diameter at the top.

Before the advent of steam power, the only practical way to move timbers from the Kawarthas to Quebec City (where they were loaded on ships for Britain) was to float them down the Trent River. To make this practical, even for masts, the lumbermen devised a system of dams, reservoirs and slides, so the timbers could be swept past each obstruction on the way. On flat water, they were typically sailed as cribs or rafts, but once the drive came to a rapid, the timbers had to be separated, floated past the obstruction individually, then reassembled. It was a very laborious process that would take a season to float to Quebec from the Kawarthas.

Throughout the nineteenth century, local promoters put tremendous political pressure on politicians to invest in a through waterway. Despite the lobbying, the Trent Canal was not completed until June 3, 1918, 85 years after work began. The Trent River was one of the last sections to be completed. Then boats could travel from Lake Ontario to Lake Couchiching. Two years later, through navigation finally reached Georgian Bay. For all the arguments that had been made about how important this route was as a waterway to export the wheat of the prairies, there was no interest in using it for long-distance shipments. The Trent-Severn Waterway was too small and winding for the ships of the day. By then, railways had been carrying the bulk of goods to and from the region for decades. Instead, it became a waterway of leisure.

Much of Haliburton County drains into the Kawartha Lakes via the Burnt and Gull Rivers, which both flow into the north end of Cameron Lake, before winding their way to Trenton, on Lake Ontario. The two watercourses have significant differences. Heading northeast out of Cameron Lake, the Burnt River divides into multiple branches that wind their way through east Haliburton. The Gull River connects many lakes in western Haliburton and the north end of the City of Kawartha Lakes including Percy, Oblong, Redstone, Kennisis, Sherborne, Kushog, Twelve Mile, Bob and Gull Lakes, before flowing through Coboconk into Balsam Lake, then into Cameron Lake.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, both watercourses were developed to facilitate logging. Timber companies created dams and reservoirs so they could hold back the spring freshet to increase flow rates, helping to wash logs downstream, as river drivers guided them past obstructions and cataracts along the way. The Burnt River split into three branches: called the Burnt, Irondale and Drag Rivers. These watercourses tended to drain relatively quickly, though they were winding and had many rapids along the way. There is a chain of lakes on the Drag River between Head Lake and Canning Lake. The Gull River drainage to the west was comprised of many lakes, so floating logs required capstan cribs (floating horse-powered winches), steamships or alligator tugs (amphibious steam-powered winch boats) to tow logs across lakes. But in both cases, companies manipulated the flow of water to facilitate log drives. The infrastructure created to help float out logs would be modified to maintain water levels for navigation in the years the followed.

In the twentieth century, the development of the watercourses differed. The lakes of the Gull and Drag River drainages were appealing locations for resorts. After the Second World War, ever more families had a cottage, leading much of the waterfront to develop. Marinas sprung up on many of the lakes as cottaging became more common. On the other two branches of the Burnt River, boaters had to be a little more adventurous. Only small motorboats could navigate many stretches. Canoes and kayaks could be portaged around the rapids. Though some cottages line the rivers, they did not develop to the same degree as on the lakes to the west, and many stretches remained vegetated.

In the early nineteenth century, Little Bob Channel was a marshy, intermittent stream linking Sturgeon and Pigeon Lakes. At that time, Pigeon Lake was much slenderer, more like a river. Sturgeon Lake was also much smaller, particularly on its north and south arms. To build mills and facilitate travel on the Trent-Severn Waterway, dams were built at each cataract along the way including Bobcaygeon. As the waterway was designed to accommodate boats drawing up to five feet of water, most of the dams raised water levels by at least five feet.

The Bobcaygeon lock was the first constructed on the Trent-Severn Waterway in 1833, on a canal that cut around the rapids on Big Bob Channel. This cataract was known to local Michi Saagiig as bkijjiwang which is a verb, to flow around rocks—hence the name of the village. The British would prefer to use a noun to describe the same sight as a rapid. Big Bob Channel was the primary route through the village at the time, and when the Commissioners designed the Bobcaygeon lock, they assumed that constructing a dam across it would raise Sturgeon Lake, and allow the lock to function. Little did they realize, that Little Bob Channel would serve as a spillway. The lock would have to be redesigned, and a dam put on the second watercourse through the village before it would function.

With the Bobcaygeon dams in place, Little Bob Channel became a navigable watercourse year-round. In 1870, Mossom Boyd relocated his sawmill from the locks to Little Bob Channel, and for many years a great quantity of sawdust and mill waste made its way into the channel. By 1886, so much sawdust had accumulated that the steamer Beaubocage mired in it. To this day, mill waste can be found in the channel. Nevertheless, upstream Mossom Boyd’s Trent Valley Navigation Company maintained its boats on the shore.

By the start of the twentieth century, the old growth forests that had fuelled a boom in pine exports were becoming scare and the Little Bob Mill closed. In 1908, it was demolished to make way for a power plant, which would bring electric lights to the village. The Bobcaygeon dams would continue to maintain water levels in Little Bob Channel, which became increasingly precise as the century passed. In the mid twentieth century, many kids from the village would head down to the foot of Bolton Street to swim. Many houses have been constructed on Little Bob to enjoy its waterfront, taking for granted that is a year-round watercourse, not an intermittent stream.

The Kawartha Lakes straddle the boundary between the area where limestone tends to be the top layer of bedrock and the Canadian Shield where it is much harder, Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock. Looking at the region in detail, the boundary is not sharp—there are outliers on either side. One of the most prominent and best known is Red Rock. It is aptly named, being a very noticeable stone hill, located roughly halfway between Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon. It has been a natural landmark for generations.

Some trees manage to grow on Red Rock, but in places they are sparse, and a significant proportion is exposed rock. From the top of this Precambrian outlier visitors have an interesting view of the surrounding countryside and Sturgeon Lake. For many years it was favourite place for picnics and hiking excursions. Though it was privately owned, it was almost like a community park. At present, there is no public access.

Red Rock gave its name to the rural settlement that formed in the area and the road that it is situated on. In the twentieth century the local sports teams were known as the Red Rock Roosters. In the second half of the century, local residents started to drive to larger communities, rather than spending almost their whole lives in this close-knit community, as had been common in generations past. Providence Church, which is one concession east on the Fenelon-Bobcaygeon Road, is one of the few neighbourhood churches that still conducts multiple services a year. As the local school closed, and ever more residents of the neighbourhood drove to town for work, Red Rock also ceased to be a public gathering place. Today, many local residents have no idea about all the happy memories that were once created on Red Rock.

In Buckhorn, just a few hundred meters above the community’s lock and dam, are the Adam and Eve Rocks. They are a special place for couples to come, because “if two lovers hold hands and touch one of the rocks, their lives will be blessed.” Over the years, countless couples have made the pilgrimage to these rocks, named for the original Biblical family, hoping that their own family might live a blessed life. There is a small forested park beside the rocks, that makes a nice romantic outing—a place to take a picture and enjoy a picnic—hence their other nickname, the Kissing Rocks. It is also a place to wonder: How did those rocks get there?

In the early nineteenth century, many observers were inclined to look for Biblical explanations of natural phenomena that they encountered. Are they evidence of the Great Flood? Are they a divine creation? As scientists were looking to interpret the world based on human observation and reason, rather than faith, massive, peculiarly placed boulders like Adam and Eve were difficult to explain. As the century wore on, geologists began to find more evidence that there once was an ice age. Rather than pondering the awesome power of God, they modelled the awesome power of glaciers.

Standing in the clearing at the Adam and Eve rocks, it’s hard to imagine how an ice sheet could have deposited them there—but it is also hard to imagine what it was like to be in North America when Ontario was covered with ice—that at its maximum was about three kilometres thick. Though we tend to think of ice as being a solid, when it is that thick it moves under its own weight—albeit at a ‘glacial’ pace. Though it moved very slowly, the glacier could exert incredible force, literally reshaping the landscape.

It is hard to know exactly how the Adam and Eve Rocks ended up being placed on this slope. One theory is that as the ice was moving alongside a rock face (like a cliff face) the force of the moving ice broke the Adam and Eve Rocks off, then as the ice continued to flow, they were carried many kilometres, then left behind as the glacier melted away. But where exactly they came from is anybody’s guess—despite all of the work that geologists have done over the years.

Adam and Eve are conspicuously large boulders in a region where much of the landscape has grown on glacially deposited materials. But they are certainly not the only large boulders that are thought to be deposited by glaciers. On the other shore of the waterway, near Home Hardware, is the Balancing (or Council) Rock—which raises the same question of how such a large boulder came to rest on sloping ground above the waterway.

In the late nineteenth century, the Buckhorn Lodge/Inn was a favourite stop for lumberjacks, who were notorious for visiting the bar. After a few drinks, countless lumberjacks made their way outside to see if they could unbalance the Balancing Rock. The fact that no group of men, no matter how strong they were succeeded in tipping it down the hill to the waterway is a testament to just how heavy it is.

Buckhorn is a community whose rocks are of mythical proportions. Whether it is the chance to demonstrate superhuman strength by tipping the Balancing Rock, or beginning a new chapter in a blessed life, if you believe in magic, you may never forget the trip to Buckhorn’s legendary rocks.

Just down the road from the Adam and Eve Rocks, where “if two lovers hold hands and touch one of the rocks, their lives will be blessed” is another mystical symbol of true love: the Giant’s Heart. Sandy or Manidoo (= Spirit) Lake has long been a magical or sacred place. The lake itself is striking, with a blue-green hue, that often changes depending on the lighting. Curiously, it also has no river feeding it, so where does the water come from?

Near the southern tip of Sandy Lake, is the Giant Heart that can be seen from Lakehurst Road. It is formed of thousands of pieces of broken granite. On calm days, the ripples on the water look like the heart is beating. In winter the ice at the Giant’s Heart can appear darker than on the rest of the lake. In spring, the ice melts over the heart first—legend has it because of its warmth. But where does the Giant’s Heart come from?

One young princess fell in love with a young man, so the story goes, but she was so beautiful that many others wanted to marry her. By custom in her community, the strongest warrior would be chosen as her husband. At the time, her community was at war and their homeland was being invaded. They decided to make their last stand near the shore of Sandy Lake. “The prospective husband fought like a lion, but ultimately was killed in the battle. The princess refused to flee and stayed behind to be near her true love. Alas, she too perished in the battle. Her body ended up in Sandy Lake where her heart floated to the south end and lives on in the Giant’s Heart: A symbol of eternal love.”

When the Kawartha Lakes were covered by a thick ice sheet, water continued to flow through and under the ice sheet during certain periods. As water flowed through the glacier, it would slowly erode whatever materials it encountered. When water flowed over the same course for extended periods of time, materials tended to be deposited along the stream bed. As materials are carried and deposited by water, they tend to be sorted by the patterns of flow. These ancient watercourses tended to deposit similar materials together—one area might contain pebbles and another sand. Once the glacier disappeared, the former river beds would be left on top of whichever ground they happened to land on—and are called eskers (derived from the Irish word eiscir, for a ridge separating two areas of lower elevation).

In Fenelon Township, there is a long esker that extends northeast from Goose Lake (near Cambray) to the south shore of Cameron Lake near Fenelon Falls. It points directly towards another esker on the other side of the Fenelon River, that continues north to Bury’s Green Road, just east of Highway 121. Could it be that these two eskers were formed by the same river, and that the section at the Fenelon River was washed away when this watercourse was draining a great lake at the end of the last glaciation?

In the nineteenth century, much of the esker was cleared, and attempts were made to farm it. Being largely comprised of sand and stone, it was not suitable for tillage, though parts of it could provide fodder for animals. Before the advent of hydraulic earth moving machinery, it was very laborious to extract aggregates, and this was only practical on a small scale. One of the first locations where it was practical was at the Fenelon Falls Sand Hill, which was on Louisa Street, immediately beside the railway. In the twentieth century, the Canadian National Railway, Wilf Jackett and other local businesses processed material here. In recent years this site has regrown, and though privately owned, many local families walk and toboggan there.

In the second half of the twentieth century, much of the aggregate extraction occurred on the other side of the Fenelon River, especially near the shore of Cameron Lake. W.G. Jackett and Sons and Ormell Sand and Gravel operate pits side by side on Highway 35, at a site that in the 1940s, had been a favourite hangout for local youth called ‘Moonshine Mountain.’ As countless loads of sand and gravel have been trucked from the sites over the decades, what was once a ‘mountain’ providing a lookout over the surrounding countryside has become a much smaller hill with a pond beside it. It remains the site of much of the area’s aggregate for construction, as material is also removed from other sites along the esker.

South of the Kawartha Lakes, there is another well-known local esker, called the Omemee Esker or the Omemee Hogsback. This esker is Y shaped, with one branch extending from near Downeyville and the other from the southern tip of Pigeon Lake, meeting west of Omemee (i.e. the hill on Highway 7 just west of the village), before continuing south on the west side of Franklin and ending near Bethany. Similarly to the Fenelon Esker, this landscape feature has been mined for sand and gravel, and parts of it have become popular sites for recreation—near Omemee and at the Emily Tract.

In the nineteenth century, much of the forest cover in the Kawartha Lakes region was cleared for agriculture or lumber and timber production. Whereas in the nineteenth century, clearing the land was often seen as a positive, as generations passed, some families found that the soils on their lots were not good enough to make a living from.

During the nineteenth century rush to harvest the old-growth white pine, loggers only had muscle power to work with, so they cut selectively, and had little choice but to leave behind fantastic amounts of slash. Once it had a summer to dry, it made great kindling, and fueled enormous conflagrations. The largest local fire, in 1913, tore through 175,840 acres, making it a notable disaster on the national stage, and prompting an official investigation. Locally, it was so smoky that boats could hardly see to cross Sturgeon Lake.

Faced with abandoned farms in certain locations and these massive forest fires, the Government of Ontario took an interest in reseeding lands that had been cutover, burntover or abandoned farms. The initial interest was more economical than ecological, as it sought to maintain a valuable natural resource, pine trees. At the end of the nineteenth century, the last stands of virgin pine forests had fetched staggering prices at Crown auctions.

In 1928, the 178-acre Emily Tract was created from abandoned farmland surrounding the Omemee Hogsback. The next year, the former farm of Robert Maconachie became part of the Victoria County Forest, called the Somerville Tract or Pinery. In both cases the old farms were replanted with pine trees—white, red and Scots pines. Initially, these trees were planted in regular arrays. Since then, many parts of these tracts have naturalized to become a much more diverse ecosystem. Yet, especially in the Pinery, the distinctive appearance of having the old pine plantation towering over a mixed forest remains. Today both of these tracts have trails through the woods that are used year-round. The Somerville Tract has ATV and snowmobile trails, while the Emily Tract favours hiking, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

Beavers are one of the few animals other than humans that form homes that may last for generations and significantly alter their ecosystems. Some beaver dams have been documented to be over one hundred years old. As families of beavers maintain their lodges and dams, they can flood areas, while reducing the rate of flow on creeks, causing areas to fill with silt, forming soil that can be colonized by aquatic grasses and sedges.

Though they are the second largest surviving rodents, they do not like to venture far from the water to collect the trees (often poplars) that they need to maintain their lodges and dams. Though beavers typically remain in the same location for generations, sometimes, whether as a result of human intervention, habitat change, or some other cause, beavers move on. Then their dams will deteriorate, releasing the water that they once held back, transforming the (flooded) meadow into drier land.

As the first European migrants came to the Kawarthas, many brought livestock with them that needed fodder. While it was more difficult to harvest and not as nutritious as European fodder crops, beaver hay was often all they had to feed their animals. Bluejoint was said to be one of the best beaver grasses, and grew densely. Cutting it by hand was a wet and mucky job, usually undertaken between June and September.

Having a beaver meadow was very advantageous for early settlers in the Kawarthas, and a few had their locations recorded. There was a large beaver meadow on Lot 23 XI Fenelon, just east of Fenelon Falls, and one of over twenty acres on the west half of 17 I Verulam. Bobcaygeon’s proprietor Thomas Need claimed to have a beaver meadow of nearly 100 acres around his farm on 15 VIII Verulam. John Langton, who lived at Blythe, cut about four tons of hay from his meadow in 1834. Beaver hay continued to be cut until the end of the nineteenth century, particularly in townships to the north. In the twentieth century, local residents are more likely to appreciate beaver meadows for their beauty, rather than their agricultural potential.

Each lake in the Kawartha Lakes region has numerous tributary creeks, each of which has their own unique history. To modern observers, most of these creeks are small, being just a few metres wide. Most are easily bridged with culverts, and today, few people think twice as they drive over them. But in the nineteenth century, many of these watercourses were used to float logs to saw and shingle mills.

Hawker’s Creek flows south, bisecting North Verulam Township on its way to Sturgeon Lake, which it meets near Eganridge Golf and Country Club. Around 1870, Sidney Hawker operated a single mill at the mouth of this watercourse, which was named in his honour. Upstream, there were plenty of cedar trees that could be made into shingles, in an era when this was the best roofing option—far superior to the hollowed, half-log scoops that were common on shanties. Being low and swampy, the shores of Hawker’s Creek were not as developed as the surrounding countryside, and are a very important part of the ecosystem. They provide habitat for plants, birds, bats, amphibians and reptiles. With such ecological diversity, Hawker’s Creek can be a very beautiful place to appreciate.

Nogies Creek winds its way south from Bass Lake to Pigeon Lake. It is located in the transition zone between the Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield and more level limestone plains located to the south. There is a prominent escarpment located on its west side, where limestone abruptly rises 75 to 100 feet above the river valley. Transition zones are often very interesting ecologically, and Nogies Creek is no exception.

The creek was named for Peter Nogee (Nogie, Snowstorm), who was a chief at Mud Lake (as Curve Lake was called in the nineteenth century). It was not located far from the village—it was within a few hours paddle. Since time immemorial it had been a place where people from the community would go to hunt, trap, fish and gather. He became a chief of his village, only to be accused of embezzlement. At the time, the British Indian Department expected that British accounting norms would be followed, which would be new concepts to those raised speaking a different language, in a vastly different culture. He was certainly not the only leader to face such accusations. Banished from the community, Chief Nogee would reside in a cabin on his namesake creek. One lady who had emigrated from Britain remembered him as “a strange, eccentric, merry old fellow, with a skin like red mahogany, and a wiry sinewy frame, that looked as if it could bid defiance to every change of temperature.”

Beginning in the 1830s, many European settlers came to the Nogies Creek area and began using the landscape in novel ways. Being tributary to the Trent River and close to Bobcaygeon, it soon became a primary route to float out logs. For much of the nineteenth century, it was a major source of timber for Mossom Boyd’s Bobcaygeon mills. The Gilmour Company, who owned one of Canada’s largest mills at Trenton also owned lots on this creek and built a supply depot with a house and barn on Lot 29, Concession 17 of Harvey Township. Before the end of the century, practically all of the straight, old growth pine was floated downstream—which led it to be dammed to manipulate water levels to accentuate the spring freshet to flush logs down the river. Many of the cedar trees along the river were floated down to Parker Davis’ shingle mill, located at Nogies Creek.

While Nogies Creek continued to be a destination for hunting, fishing and trapping, families tried to establish homesteads in the area. Connected to Bobcaygeon by a cadge road or the waterway, pioneer settlers included J.B. Crowe, William Oliver, William Goodenough and William Ventress. Though most of the residents were employed logging, some farmers did manage to scratch out a living on the region’s stony soils. But over the course of the twentieth century, almost every farm in the vicinity reverted to forest. For many years, significant tracts were used to pasture cattle, which were driven on foot to their summer domain from farms in more fertile areas to the south.

By the start of the twentieth century, Nogies Creek was being promoted as a cycling destination, being a pleasant outing from Bobcaygeon. As farming in the area was declining over the course of the twentieth century, interest in nature conservation was increasing. It became home to popular tourist resorts. By the 1970s, George Holeton, a University of Toronto Zoologist was overseeing a research camp studying the local fish population, particularly muskellunge and bass. Using tracking devices, they studied what fish do in winter, and examined the effects of being caught and released. It remains a provincial fish sanctuary.

Whereas in the nineteenth century the dam on Nogies Creek was used to facilitate floating logs downstream, in the twentieth century it came to be used to maintain water levels for navigation. Nogies Creek became a popular destination for canoers and kayakers. The Twin Mountains Snowmobile Club maintains 140 kilometres of trails through the woods in the vicinity. Many ATVs bring their machines to enjoy ripping through the forests, in a region that has redeveloped around its ‘natural’ beauty.

There are a few locations along the Kawartha Lakes, where the soils are so severely eroded that they support bur oak savannahs (grasslands with scattered trees) rather than dense forests. The best known of these savannahs occurs on the north shore of the Fenelon River—the ancient Oak Grove in which Maryboro Lodge was built in 1837. In the early nineteenth century, it was much larger than it is today.

Bur Oaks thrive in open spaces, and are a common tree on the eastern edge of the Great Plains—where forest transitions into grassland. Their specific name macrocarpa, means “large fruit” reflecting the fact that they produce the largest acorns of any North American oak. They feed many animals, including the squirrels that thrive in the Oak Grove today. These trees not shade tolerant, so they cannot compete in the dense forests that covered much of the Kawarthas before its transformation into an agricultural landscape. But bur oaks can survive in droughty areas where other native trees would wither away.

When Fenelon Falls was briefly the controlling sill of Glacial Lake Algonquin at the end of the last glaciation a tremendous amount of water flowed down an enlarged Fenelon River, washing away the village’s topsoil, leaving a shaley limestone bed. The resulting ecosystem was so dry that most forest trees could not survive. Since time immemorial it was a bur oak savannah, supporting its own unique ecosystem. Because of the droughty conditions, the oaks are dwarfed, never achieving the size they could achieve in an easier climate. However, because they remain small, they live for an unusually long time—trees often die as a result of growing to an unsustainably large size. The oldest trees in the Oak Grove are thought to date back to the seventeenth century—around the time when Champlain passed through the Kawarthas.

The Oak Grove was the easiest section of Fenelon Falls to develop—buildings could be constructed without having to remove (many) trees—and it contained the waterpower of Fenelon Falls. Before long, it was a transformed into a backwoods village. In 1837, when village proprietor decided to build his home, he chose the oak grove at the mouth of the river on Cameron Lake. Wallis kept a portion of the oak grove between his home and the falls as a private park. As long as James Wallis owned Maryboro, the Oak Grove was to a degree protected—its natural beauty had been integral to his waterfront estate. But once his creditors foreclosed and liquidated his assets, the estate would be developed. In 1877 the Victoria Railway cut through the Oak Grove and grounds of Maryboro Lodge.

Shortly after the railway was completed, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald secured re-election, locally by promising to complete the Trent-Severn Waterway. In 1882 work began on the Fenelon Canal, cutting straight through the Oak Grove and creating the Fenelon Island. As it was completed, Wallis’ park was subdivided into building lots, which are today the Oak Street Heritage District. Before long, all that remained of the Maryboro Estate was a small rump surrounding Wallis’ former home. Many oaks lived on as landscape trees.

For generations, the Carden Plain has been a difficult place for human habitation. It was far from the Michi Saagig villages of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, and as settlers streamed to the area, it was quickly evident that their traditional mixed farming way of life would not readily translate to these natural clearings—though it has found a niche as arid cattle pasture. Unlike many of Ontario’s Parks, the Carden Alvar became a provincial park in 2014, for its significance to other species, recognized and advocated by many local volunteers. It is a provincial park, where most visitors truly are there to appreciate the local ecology, especially its birds.

The Carden Alvar is a unique ecosystem—an area of thin or no soil and sparse vegetation on top of limestone bedrock. Alvars are harsh environments, evidenced by stunted tree growth, surrounded by open plains where they cannot grow at all. Yet, in the context of eastern North America, where the overwhelming majority of temperate uplands were forested, alvars provide one of the few natural grasslands which support plants and animals, including some that are uncommon in the surrounding forests.

At first glance, the Carden Alvar may not seem that different from other stony fields in the region. With monarch butterflies fluttering between asters, alongside cattle grazing in fields coloured by granite boulders, rusty old windmills, Indian paintbrush, buttercups, goldenrod, and blueweed—many locals might feel at home. But there is something a little different about the golden grasslands. The Carden plains are home to many threatened species like the Grasshopper Sparrow, Short-Eared Owl, Bobolink, Eastern Meadowlark, Least Bittern or Red-Headed Woodpecker. Birdwatchers might be fortunate enough to see a Loggerhead Shrike. This bird sits atop trees looking for prey in short grasslands, and though common in the 1970s, there are thought to be only 25 breeding pairs still alive in Ontario. It is home to other grassland birds like the Upland Sandpiper, Field Sparrow, Eastern Meadowlark, Horned Lark, Henslow’s Sparrow, and Common Nighthawk. The Carden Plain has been designated an Important Bird Area.

At the Carden Alvar there are many grey sheets of fissured limestone, surrounded by grasslands, with stunted trees. It is also home to examples of natural limestone pavement—they look like giant stepping stones, with narrow strips of grass filling the cracks. Though much of the region is a natural grassland, it also supports scattered forests and wetlands. Here and there, there are forests, with trees approaching a common height. But many of these pockets of soil are small, and not too far away the exposed limestone and stunted trees return.

Indian Point is a large peninsula that divides the Northwest Bay of Balsam Lake from the Gull River, which winds through Coboconk and a great many lakes on its way to the northern end of the Trent Watershed. Its alvar landscape is rocky, in places fissured rocks do not even support trees. But the peninsula has an undeniable beauty. Today, its woods and trails make for a pleasant outing, while many cottagers enjoy sunsets over Balsam Lake.

In the early nineteenth century, the Kawarthas were home to Michi Saagiig villages at Lake Scugog, Curve Lake, Rice Lake and Aldervile. By the 1830s, there were about sixty former Lake Scugog residents living at Curve Lake, including Chief Jacob Crane, who were interesting in moving to a separate village. At the same time, there were missionaries in the region, trying to spread Christianity and introduce agriculture. In 1833, Alexander McDonell, the Crown Lands Agent at Peterborough, established Crane along with some residents of Curve Lake and Lake Scugog on the peninsula at the north end of Balsam Lake, described as “a more healthy and promising location near Balsam Lake.” Many chose to remain behind. To create this settlement, some undeeded settlers needed to be removed.

Though the region was alvar, nothing was recorded in the surveys to indicate that Indian Point was not suitable for agriculture (much land in Ontario was surveyed for agriculture that was entirely unsuited, and offered for sale to potential farmers). The new community was granted 1,206 acres, the missionaries hoped this would show how successful agriculture could be, while the settlers looked forward to a new future. The Indian Point settlement became a charitable cause, soliciting many well-meaning donations. There were plans to build houses for each family, and ensure that everyone would have the opportunity to learn the newest agricultural techniques. The community kept oxen, while raising corn and potatoes. Though ten houses were planned, by 1839, only two were complete and every year it became a little more obvious that Indian Point just wasn’t farmland.

By 1843 the village was well aware that the project had been futile. Fortunately for the residents of Balsam Lake, the returns from their traditional livelihood and the fur trade, were often better than farming. The community then purchased 600 acres on Scugog Island—near the former site of a traditional village that had not been granted as a reserve—out of their band funds. Some residents went to Snake Island in Lake Simcoe or Curve Lake, but most went to Lake Scugog. The government sold the former Balsam Lake settlement for their benefit to lumberman Alexander Dennistoun for $2175.60. After stripping the timber, he sold the property to John Grandy in 1868 for $10,000, and the peninsula has since become a Provincial Park and cottage community.

In the nineteenth century, Upper Canada transformed the colony into townships, each of which was a grid of lots and concessions. Many townships contained approximately 10-15 concessions, with 30-35 lots each. The decision to create a grid of rectangles assumed that the world was flat. Jogs in roads compensated for the curvature of the earth’s surface. Assuming that the survey was perfectly implemented, in the Kawarthas there would need to be a jog of about one mile in twenty-nine on roads running north-south.

The surveys were inevitably imperfect. Surveyors used steel chains, which were sixty-six feet long (the standard width of a road allowance in that era) containing 100 links each. A common size for a 200 acre lot was 30 chains by 66 chains 67 links (or about 3/8 x 5/6 of a mile). To lay out these lots, surveyors and their chain bearers set out through the forests, using the chains to measure distance. Every time they ascended or descended a hill it introduced an error. As they were supposed to draw straight lines, regardless of the terrain, every time they encountered a lake, cliff or other obstacle, they had to figure out how to use a chain to measure it, or guess.

John Huston’s survey of Verulam Township was among the worst in Ontario. For generations afterwards, rumours circulated that he must have been drunk. It seems that the problem was the crew was supposed to run lines that went across Sturgeon Lake (which divides the township roughly in half) and when they arrived at the lake shore with their survey chains, they did not see how to measure the width accurately, so they guessed—incorrectly. Instead of running all the concession lines from the south boundary to the north as they were instructed to do, it would have been easier to run the next line from north back to the south. So, one concession lines is measured more or less correctly starting at the south end of the township, but then errs significantly north of Sturgeon Lake. In the next concession it is fairly accurate north of the lake, only to vary substantially south of the lake, and so on, through the township’s ten concessions.

The west half of a lot would be determined by one concession line, and the east by the next. For instance, in Verulam’s Concession IV, the west half of Lot 27 ended up slightly north of the east half of lot 29, when it was supposed to be ¾ of a mile to the south. This meant that a farmer who owned a 200 acre lot might end up with two parcels that were neither contiguous, nor 100 acres. The survey in Verulam Township was bad enough that when the roads were built, they had to force road allowances between existing lots, rather than using the disjoint allowances that were provided. Generations later, Ontario surveyors would still be sorting out the imperfections of the original township plans.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, European migration to the Kawarthas proceeded relatively quickly along the Trent Waterway. But north of the lakes this settlement was noticeably slower, especially on the Canadian Shield. The Government of Upper Canada (later Ontario) surveyed townships into farm lots while scarcely considering whether or not the land was suitable for agriculture. Its assumption was that practically all land would be farmland, and it would persist in surveying townships for agriculture into northern Ontario, long after it was obvious to many other observers that these regions would never be converted into agricultural landscapes.

By the mid nineteenth century, it had become clear that the pace of agricultural colonization was much slower on the Canadian Shield. The official response was the creation of colonization roads, beginning with the Bobcaygeon Road. Starting in its namesake village, it reached Kinmount in 1858, then Minden one year later. Continuing north, it was completed to the Oxtongue River (near Dwight) in 1863. Just as little consideration was given to whether townships were suitable for agriculture, the Colonization Roads were intended to be straight lines, regardless of the terrain encountered.

The Bobcaygeon Road was the first of the colonization roads, and one of the most successful. Before the advent of the railway, much of the early traffic on this route was to serve logging camps in Kinmount and regions to the north. This road did prompt the founding of many settlements along the way, including Kinmount and Minden. In the early years, there were many hotels along the way, because teamsters could not drive their horses many miles given the rough road conditions of the time. More recently, parts of the Bobcaygeon Road have been rerouted, especially from Minden north. But north of Peterson’s Corners (which was once the junction between the Bobcaygeon Road and the Peterson Road, now a ghost town west of Carnarvon) there were very few settlers.

By the 1870s, Ontario had created a network of Colonization Roads. In the Kawarthas, the Victoria Road, Cameron Road (similar to Highway 35 through Rosedale, Coboconk and Norland), Bobcaygeon Road, Buckhorn Road and Burleigh Road ran north. The Monck Road (now #45) and Peterson Road (similar to #118) ran east-west. Bell’s Line was surveyed further north, but it was never opened as a road. The colonization roads scheme met with mixed results. Many of the routes did become long distance transportation routes, though they often had to be resurveyed to take into account local terrain. Significant stretches were subsequently abandoned and never rebuilt. By the twentieth century, only a small proportion of the roads were home to agricultural settlement—let alone the adjacent townships they were intended to open.

The Victoria Colonization Road started at Glenarm, ran north through Victoria Road and Uphill, and was later extended south to Cambray and Oakwood. It was intended to open northern Victoria County and the Muskoka District for agriculture. Some immigrants did come to try farming, a few reached as far north as Uphill, but north of that settlement the terrain was definitely stoney. The road was extended to cross the Black River at Victoria Bridge (beside Victoria Falls) and connect Longford Township, but it did not succeed in attracting any farmers that far north. Not long after it was completed forest fires burned many of the bridges around Longford Township.

Nicknamed the “Longford Rocks,” it was fortunate that no one took the government plans to create an agricultural settlement seriously—in other locations immigrants spent what little money they had trying to create a farm on unsuitable soils that could never prosper. Though the Crown sold it to a British emigration company, it was flipped to the newly-founded Longford Lumber Company of Orillia.

The Longford Lumber Company established Uphill as their depot. Road maintenance was the responsibility of the local municipality, but since there were not settlers, Victoria County was forced to make the repairs. Being reluctant to invest in a route that was serving the business interests of a private company from a different region, they often did as little as possible. North of Longford Township, the road was soon abandoned, but it was maintained to Longford as long as the lumber company was active there. The company deployed workers to watch bridges when there was a threat of forest fire. After five years the company had cut the timber that was worthwhile and resold the cutover land for a quarter of the original purchase price. By 1928, the Victoria Road through Longford Township was entirely abandoned. It remains a privately owned township and is almost entirely forested.

Living on a chain of lakes that seldom (if ever) flood and maintain their height within a few inches is not a natural state of affairs. The Trent-Severn Waterway is in fact a very complicated feat of hydrological engineering. Initially, despite the dams and locks, navigation was still difficult in late summer as water levels dropped. To even out the fluctuations, thousands of acres were flooded to the north in creating reservoir lakes, borrowing on the expertise (and often the dams) of logging operations.

Even today, in some seasons, witnessing this nineteenth century relic—drowned land as far as the eye can see can look ghastly. At other times, the lakes have their own unique charm. On many of the reservoirs, the tremendous landscape changes have been naturalized over the generations since.

These reservoir lakes are also some reflection of the landscapes that the nineteenth century immigrants to the Kawarthas called home. As the Kawarthas were dammed for mills and locks, the lakes were raised (often approximately 5 feet). This flooded a ring of land around the lakes, creating an equally striking belt of drowned land, that many of the immigrants blamed for the coincident malaria epidemics. They were generally seen as a vile and putrefying mess.  On much of the Kawarthas the drowned land has been cleared, though it is still evident in some less frequented corners.

The Trent-Severn Waterway was designed to accommodate boats drawing up to five feet of water. To ensure that the vessels could get over shallows, including those that were located near most of the cataracts on the system, most of the lakes along the waterway were raised at least five feet. This meant that a band of land was flooded around the shores of each lake. Some lakes became dramatically larger once they were dammed. For instance, Pigeon Lake formerly looked much more like a river than a lake, particularly at its south end.

In 1833, William Purdy built a 14 foot high dam at Lindsay that flooded approximately 11,000 acres around Lake Scugog. In that era, malaria was common in Upper Canada. At the time it was called ‘ague’ and believed to be caused by the vapours of rotting vegetation—which was close to the correct explanation as mosquitoes that were more prevalent around wetlands were spreading the condition. In 1838, those affected by the flooding rose to destroy the dam. The provincial Board of Works intervened in 1844, rebuilding the dam at a height of 7 feet, further downstream in conjunction with the Lindsay Lock.

The landscape change was more drastic between Balsam Lake and Lake Scugog where the waterway was crossing the height of land between two watersheds. While the Kirkfield Lift Lock removed the need for several smaller locks, it did not facilitate a significant quantity of water being drawn from Balsam Lake to feed the locks downstream towards Lake Simcoe. To create a reservoir to feed these locks and facilitate navigation, artificial lakes were created on either side of the lift lock—Canal to the west and Mitchell to the east.

Initially, these lakes were just flooded forests, with a navigational channel dug through them. By the time that the gala was hosted to celebrate the completion of the Kirkfield Lift Lock on July 6, 1907 the forests were dying, creating a spectacle as the dignitaries took a steamship cruise to view the improvements. Shortly afterwards, the waterway received instructions to clean up the mess, so the lakes were drained and the forests cleared. The lumber was used for fencing, bridge planking and as rafters in the construction of lockmasters’ houses. The tree stumps were left to be concealed by the lakes, poised to damage the hull of any boat straying from the marked channel.

In the years since, both lakes have to a significant degree naturalized as waterbodies. Both are intersected by causeways with striking bridges. Waterfront communities have formed around the lakes, and many people have no idea that they are artificially created and maintained waterbodies. Many stumps have been removed in the vicinity of waterfront developments, but wherever they remain, they are markers of the drowned land found throughout the Kawartha Lakes.

As the Kawartha Lakes region began to be surveyed to become an agricultural landscape, railways were a very new technology, that had yet to become common. In Britain at the time, rivers and canals were a primary means of transportation and as large scale immigration began to the Kawarthas, many settlers expected that their new homes would be linked by water routes. For a new colony, it was a massive undertaking. Nichol Hugh Baird conservatively estimated the cost to link the Bay of Quinte and Lake Simcoe at ₤495,515 3s 3½ d—easily enough to bankrupt Upper Canada.

Construction began at Bobcaygeon in 1833—but the through route would not be completed until 1920. With the technology of the 1830s, digging a canal was tremendously laborious. The canals had to be cut through stone by hand. For early locks, the surface cover was removed with shovels and picks—which was the relatively easy part. To excavate through rock, labourers drove crude bits into the rock using sledgehammers, to be filled with black powder—the gunpowder of the day. When ignited, it would blast the rock apart, so the chunks could be hauled away with wheel barrows and hand carts. Thankfully the first canals were excavated through limestone. Early locks were stone with wooden gates.

When work began at Buckhorn in 1883, contractor George Goodwin had not realized what a difficult job he was facing, on the first lock constructed through the Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield. The engineers of the day had no experience of excavating granite, so the budgets proved entirely inadequate. Goodwin found that his excavating equipment was barely able to break through such hard rock. By then, steam drills were available, and Goodwin employed eight of them, but the percussion of excavating this rock was “so severe that the machines could not stand it for any reasonable length of time.” He could only keep two drills operating at a time, while the others were being repaired or rebuilt. He had as many men working at repairing the drills as he had excavating. Importing Italian labour, he managed to complete the contract by November 1884.

In the same period, work was underway at Fenelon Falls, which was one of the first jobs where dynamite was used. A much more powerful explosive than black powder, contractor Angus McDonald did not initially realize its explosive force. One of the first blasts sent rocks raining down on the village, smashing through stores. Though more showers of stone periodically fell—in one blast several stores were hit, including a 57 ½ pound rock that broke through a rafter in a lean-to attached to William Campbell’s store, another 50 pound stone broke the telegraph line, a 26 pound rock put a 2 foot long hole in the sidewalk 150 yards from the canal, and another hit the hind end of a canal horse, sending it frantically galloping through town—fortunately no one was injured, though one boy was pulled from the path of a flying rock. Before the masonry work would be completed in 1885, rock showers were no longer a local weather feature.

By the 1890s, concrete was a new building material, and engineer R.B. Rogers would design two marvellous lift locks at Peterborough and Kirkfield to overcome significant disparities in water levels between adjacent lakes. Over the course of the twentieth century, concrete lock walls with steel gates would replace many of the old wooden locks, which would only last a few years. In many cases, like Fenelon Falls, part of the old stone masonry was retained. By the time W.G. Jackett and Sons received the contract to haul away the material blasted from the lock pit as Fenelon Falls was being reconstructed in the early 1960s, they had a Quickway cable machine.  With a bucket dangling on the end of a cable, it could lift rocks—a precursor of the solid hydraulic excavators that we take for granted today. George Jackett and Garnet Harrison worked two winters as the channel around Fenelon Falls was made deeper to allow the installation of a single concrete lock, with a fixed concrete bridge. Previously, two flights of locks and a swing bridge facilitated traffic passing the site.

When Railways were first introduced, they were a revolutionary technology, allowing passengers and freight—even bulky goods—to be transported long distances quickly and relatively economically. In 1880, a train could travel from Lindsay to Haliburton in 3 hours and 45 minutes. A horse and wagon would take days to accomplish the same trip. Railways made it practical to import and export goods from the Kawarthas that could never be economically moved by muscle power—for instance iron ore or quarried stone.

With steel wheels running on steel track, locomotives can only ascend very shallow grades—typically below 3%, ideally below 1.5%. Creating such a level course through rolling terrain like the Kawarthas was an engineering feat, and the in the case of the Victoria Railway involved following the shores of watercourses. Nevertheless, it required extensive filling (which was accomplished using muscle power, before the advent of hydraulic earth moving machinery) to create a relatively straight and level line. In the process, a massive and long-lasting landscape feature was created.

A railway from Port Hope reached Lindsay in 1857 and soon proved very successful. Connecting railways servicing regions further north would take time. Work began on the Victoria Railway in 1874 and it was complete to Haliburton by 1878. It transformed Kinmount and led to the growth of other communities like Burnt River, Howland Junction, Gelert, Lochlin and Donald, which would subsequently fade away as railway traffic declined.

After the Second World War, automobiles became much more reliable, trucks became the common mode of moving freight and regular snowplowing allowed year-round travel. Once these advances were made, it did not take long for motor vehicles to eclipse the railway. Passenger service ceased around 1960, and freight was carried on demand until 1978, when a washout north of Howland Junction closed the northern end of the of the route. Two years later the bridge over McLaren’s Creek burned and the rails were soon taken up. The Somerville and District Snowmobile Association persuaded Victoria County to turn it into a recreational corridor in the 1990s, and today more people travel the railway for pleasure than ever took the train.

South of the Canadian Shield, most dry land was converted into farmland. In the nineteenth century, most family farms were mixed farms and much of the produce was to provide for the occupant’s own needs. Most families grew a few acres of wheat—it was difficult to harvest more than 10 acres when the crop ripened without machinery. Most had at least one cow that they would milk, a team of horses or oxen for motive power, chickens to provide eggs, and a large vegetable garden. Most families grew their own potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips that would see them through the winter.

Tractors started to become common in the mid twentieth century, and family farms became vastly different within a generation. By the end of twentieth century, it would be very unusual for any family to live largely off the fruits of their own labour. Instead, farms tended to produce one product (or perhaps a few) for sale and were organized around the work a tractor could do. Gone were the days when families would work together, by hand in the fields to bring in their crops.

The fields that were level enough that a tractor could readily work them and fertile enough to grow cash crops have tended to be converted to these purposes. These farms tend to be much more common south of the Kawartha Lakes. Typically, each field has just one crop in it, that is carefully selected to thrive in that field, and sprayed with pesticides to eliminate insects, fungi, and other plants. In generations past, this work had to be done by hand, as families spent countless hours weeding, killing insects, and removing infected plants. Modern techniques allow farmers to work much larger areas, much more quickly, as farming has become increasingly industrialized. The small family farms of generations past tend no longer to be economically viable.

Farms that are too hilly or not fertile enough to support cash crops tend to be used for livestock instead—including most farms north of the Kawartha Lakes. On these farms, the fields that could be worked with a tractor tended to become hay fields. While it was long considered best practice to cultivate and reseed fields, many farmers found that this was not economically viable. Many hay fields are filled with whatever plants happen to grow and can withstand being cut annually for fodder.

Most farms in the Kawartha Lakes region were founded in the era of muscle power. Pioneer farmers felled trees with axes, then farmed around the stumps. By the late nineteenth century, stumping machines made cleared fields practical, as the horse drawn farm machinery became increasingly common. In this era, the most common farm size was 100 acres—it would be challenging for farmers to work any larger acreage without hired help. Practically every lot was a mixed farm, where families largely lived off the fruits of their own labour. In that era, many farmers took pride in their operations, and were diligent in maintaining their properties. Just as families would weed their gardens, they also ensured that trees did not grow in their fields.

In the second half of the twentieth century, as tractors became common, farmers worked larger acreages. Many families also had off farm employment. Often fields that were too undulating to be worked with a tractor became pastures. While previous generations made a point of maintaining clear fields, as time when on, other priorities seemed more important. No one had the time to suppress tree growth in pastures, and many regrew with trees—often ones that cattle or other livestock tended not to eat. Junipers came to sprawl across fields, as taller trees dotted the landscape. The resulting farms are much more varied than the open fields of generations past, offering more shade to livestock, though reducing the space available for fodder crops.

The word ‘fence’ comes from ‘defence,’ in centuries past they were a way to keep livestock out of crops. For pioneer farmers in the Kawarthas, it was common to build fences to keep animals out of a crop or garden, as animals were often kept at large. In the late nineteenth century, local municipalities created regulations that prohibited pasturing animals at large, as there were complaints about livestock desecrating cemeteries, or getting on railway tracks. By the twentieth century, it had become commonplace to build fences to keep animals in, rather than creating defences to keep them out.

The earliest fences were typically snake fences—made of stacked cedar rails, often meticulously split from larger trees. In this era, fences could be moved as needed. In the late nineteenth century, the first hay balers appeared, which used metal wire for binding. Having flexible metal wire opened all kinds of possibilities—the phrase to ‘go haywire’ derives from all of the makeshift inventions that suddenly became possible. Haywire made standing rail and dancey fences possible, which used fewer fence rails, as farmers no longer literally had mounds of trees to burn. As stumping machines became common, massive roots were often stacked at the edge of the field, and some have persevered to this day.

As farmers worked their fields, they gathered the stones that were unearthed, typically dumping them along the fence rows. As generation after generation piled their stones along the fences, they became permanent—it would be prohibitively laborious to remove a fence bottom before the advent of earth moving machinery.

To the mid twentieth century, many farmers diligently worked their fields right up to the fence. But as tractor work superceded manual labour, fencerows began to regrow. Invasive buckthorns proved well suited to these environments, propagated by birds passing the seeds as they sit on fences. Apple trees are also common, some seeded by farmers throwing cores to the side as they work. As trees have grown, many fencerows became wider, as machinery operators avoid tangling with them. Often becoming more permanent as the years pass, they provide habitat for many plants and animals.

In the nineteenth century, as practically all land was converted into farmland, in many parts of the Kawarthas, wetlands were one of the few landscapes that were often not cleared. If lots were entirely swampy they often were not settled, and where significant wetlands did exist, farmers might work around them. Tile drainage using clay tiles was available in the nineteenth century, but was not common in the area—especially in regions to the north. Clay tiles were more commonly used for residential drainage applications.

In the second half of the twentieth century, high density polyethylene pipe (Big-O or Drainage Tile) became economical and readily available, but still it was only economically viable to drain the best fields. Especially in regions to the north, many wetlands simply were not worth draining. Yet as drainage was becoming increasingly economically viable, regulations were introduced to conserve wetlands.

Wetlands are a part of the farm that people seldom venture into or appreciate. In the Kawarthas, they often support cedar, tamarack, poplar, elm, willow and black ash trees. They are home to many plants and animals including the frogs whose choruses are characteristic of summer evenings in the countryside. Each one is unique in the species it supports and the beauty of its appearance.

Up to the mid nineteenth century, artificial ditches for drainage were rare. Prior to the advent of Macadam (Gravel) roads in the late nineteenth century, most roads were typically little more than a strip of forest cleared with the stumps were cut low enough that the axle of an ox cart could pass. Whether clearing fields or building roads, it was seldom practical to remove tree stumps, let alone dig a ditch to facilitate drainage.

Once stone crushers and stumping machines started to appear in the region, Macadamization became practical, though it remained laborious as aggregate had to be loaded by hand into horse-drawn carts. Initially it was only practical to improve the main thoroughfares, but once dump trucks began to become common in the mid twentieth century, a base of gravel was built up on practically all roads. It then became practical to grade the roads to facilitate drainage with ditches running on either side of the road. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that the old dirt roads disappeared.

Once ditches were constructed, whether on farms or roadsides, it often did not take long for them to fill in with plants and trees. In many locations, neighbouring forests have crept back onto the road allowances, complimented by a great variety of plants that are suited to this wayside habitat. As much of the countryside has been developed for farms, homes, yards and buildings ditches are an important niche for many species, both native and introduced.

Have you ever wondered what the forests of the Kawartha Lakes region would have looked like in the early nineteenth century before the age of pine exports began?

The original surveys listed the most common trees as the countryside was laid out into farm lots. In Fenelon and Verulam Townships, the most common species listed were maple, cedar, basswood, pine, hemlock, elm, tamarack, birch, ash, alder, soft maple, beech, poplar, oak, butternut, spruce, balsam fir, ironwood and willow. If a similar list were made today, many of the same species would still be prevalent, though some trees that grow well in open areas like poplars might be more common, while others more suited to growing below a forest canopy like hemlock might be less prolific. Maples, cedars and basswoods, the three most common trees from that era, still comprise a large proportion of local forests to this day.

Looking at the records of Mossom Boyd’s Bobcaygeon sawmill once they become available in the 1870s, sawlogs that were larger than 20 inches in diameter were not common, and logs larger than 30 inches in diameter were rarer still—which is not that different than the sizes of logs that are sawn today. There were some massive trees that it would be hard to imagine today. To be exported to Britain as a ship’s mast, the timber had to be at least 75 feet long and 18 inches in diameter at the top! In the early nineteenth century, trees like that were exceptional, today, it would be hard to find any at all.

One of the few tracts of original forest that remains is the Burnham Woods, located on the outskirts of Peterborough. The Burnham family acquired this property in the 1830s, and while practically all of their neighbours were making a living by chopping a farm from the woods, they preserved a tract of land as forest. Mark S. Burnham Provincial Park is managed to allow the forest to simply be a forest. Fallen trees are not removed, except from the pathway. At the Burnham Woods visitors can witness forest succession in real life: regrowth in openings created by windthrown trees and how the various sites favour certain species. One thing that is striking, compared to some younger forests, is how open the woods are under the forest canopy.

In the first decades after Kinmount was founded in the late nineteenth century, it seemed like the community might develop as a mining centre. In 1872, Robert Gibson, who was a settler on the Monck Road east of Kinmount found iron ore on his farm (Lot 20, Concession 1 Snowdown) spawning a rush to find the ‘motherlode.’ Many prospectors came to the area, hoping to strike it rich. In 1874 Toronto investors Shortis & Sevigny established the Snowdon Iron Company, claiming to own 3 million tons of high-grade iron ore, said to be better than the produce from Marquette, Wisconsin. They hoped to establish a blast furnace and export their produce to Cleveland, but how would they transport it? The nearest railway was at Coboconk, connected by horse and wagon. Having the Victoria Railway completed to Kinmount seemed to improve their prospects of being able to export iron ore. In 1876, the company cadged 300 tons of iron ore down the Monck Road to Kinmount, where it could be reloaded (manually) onto the railway, then onto a ship steaming for Cleveland. Unfortunately, the ship sank on route, bringing down the company with it.

W.S. Myles then built a rail line to Furnace Falls, hoping to find the motherlode which might make his investments pay. By 1879 he was out of money as a profitable deposit had yet to be found. The next investors were Charles J. Pusey and Henry Howland, who finished the railway to Furnace Falls, then Irondale. Pusey moved the centre of operations north to Devil’s Creek, which was then renamed Irondale (and eventually York Station to meet the Central Ontario Railway). On July 9, 1880, eight carloads of Snowdon iron ore rolled through Kinmount, to be smelted in the United States. The operation came to centre on the ‘Howland Mine’ located on Lot 26, Concession 4, Snowdon Township (near Irondale). The mine shaft was reportedly 100 feet deep into rock, incorporating several side drifts. But it was not long before iron prices fell, making the operations unprofitable. To make matters worse, the Snowdon ore had a high sulfur content, adding to the cost of processing. In 1891, the United States put a 75 cent per ton duty on Canadian iron ore and the Irondale mines would never reopen.

On the opposite side of Kinmount, iron was found on Lot 5, Concessions 5-6, Lutterworth Township. Discovered by a settler, it would not be long before Member of Provincial Parliament and mining speculator Thomas Paxton acquired the rights, with some business associates. He used his position to have the Iron Mine Road built, connecting to the Bobcaygeon Road. Rock was blasted from an open pit, and cadged to Kinmount where it could be shipped to Whitby by rail. As had happened to the Snowdon Iron Company, a ship sunk on the way to Cleveland, a financial blow that they could not recover from.

Just south of the bridge where Union Creek crossed the Bobcaygeon Road (now Road 121, near the intersection with Road 49, south of Kinmount), deposits of galena were found in the early 1860s—hence the site was named Galena Hill. Galena is lead sulfide, being the most commonly used ore of lead, which could be smelted on an ordinary wood fire, because of lead’s low melting point. The deposits at Galena Hill also contained zinc and silver. Prospectors dug pits on both sides of the Bobcaygeon Road, shipping the ore to Bobcaygeon by horse and wagon. After the Victoria Railway reached Burnt River in 1876, the cadge routes were shortened—but it faced the same problems as other local mining ventures—challenging transportation routes, and low-quality ore. It was said that the Galena Hill minerals contained too much sulphur, so it never really was profitable. A mine on Lot 20, Concession A Galway closed in 1890, then another mine opened around 1900. Between 1932-1935 about 15-20 people were mining at Galena Hill, but it would not prove to be a lasting industry as better sources were available elsewhere. Today, the Galena Hill mines, like the iron mines further north, have been reduced to holes in the ground. Many visitors to the sites might not realize that they are in fact abandoned mines.

Before the advent of hydraulic excavation equipment, quarrying stone was an extremely labourious job. Some limestone was burned to make lime as a mortar and many communities had a local lime kiln. Given how heavy and readily available stone was, it was only in very special circumstances that it would be worthwhile to haul it any significant distance. As locks were constructed along the Trent Valley Canal, some of the stone was used for construction. It was practical to move this stone by water, or short distances in town. Quarried stone was also used to build locks, often extracted where it could be floated to the site.

As the Victoria Railway was constructed in the mid-1870s, stone was needed to construct piers and abutments for bridges. A quarry was opened south of Burnt River village, immediately beside the railway and a limestone ridge. Here stone could be relatively easily extracted, and loaded directly onto rail cars for shipment. For many years, the Burnt River Quarry was a major local employer. However, with the advent of concrete, by the 1920s, it was less common to use quarried stone as a construction material.

In second half of the nineteenth century, MacAdam roads (with gravel graded to form a smooth surface) became practical—and were far superior to the dirt or corduroy (where logs were arranged across the road, hence the name, the surface was bumpy like corduroy). Initially stones might be broken with hammers, and sites were chosen where natural gravel could be excavated. It could be shoveled into a horse drawn dump cart. With the advent of stone crushers later in the century, aggregates could be produced much more efficiently.

In the twentieth century, it became far easier to extract and transport aggregate. In the first half of the century, trucks could be loaded with horses pulling plows to drag material into their boxes… subsequently replaced with tractors pulling a plow. After the Second World War, hydraulic excavating equipment became readily available, making it far easier to use aggregate in all kinds of building projects. It even became practical to extract large quarry stone for landscaping. Today the Kawarthas are home to many quarrying operations, some serving local needs and others producing material for export.

By the 1860s, farm families had taken up most of the lots in the countryside surrounding Sturgeon Lake—but not Sturgeon Point. Much of what has since become the village was deeded to Thomas Graham in 1871, who lived on the lot to the north, and operated what was a large farm for the era, having 160 acres cleared. The strip along the waterfront was not well suited to pioneer agriculture. The soils were sandy and gravelly—so much so that parts just consisted of scattered trees, rather than the denser forests that characterized the region. But the site was naturally beautiful, and since time immemorial parties of canoers had stopped there as they made their way along Sturgeon Lake. Thomas recognized that agriculture might not be the best use of the waterfront, severed and sold a parcel to businessman Jabez Thurston, who flipped it to another investor Adam Hudspeth, who in turn sold it to the newly formed Sturgeon Point Hotel Company—controlled by George Crandell.

George Crandell was a Lindsay councillor who then operated the region’s largest steamboat company. In that era, going to stay at a beautiful hotel was common vacation, and this instantly transformed Sturgeon Point into a tourist destination. Visitors could walk along the waterfront, swim at the sandbar (which was just west of the hotel) or enjoy the hotel’s amenities: Dance hall, bowling alley, shuffleboard courts and bath houses. Crandell ensured, for the convenience of visitors, that his steamers stopped at a wharf right in front of the hotel.

Further down the waterway, Mount Julian was already a picturesque destination on Stony Lake. Crandell laid out a village which included lots for 40 individual cottages, which were soon developed. Many prominent Lindsay residents spent their summers at Sturgeon Point, travelling to and from the site by steamship. After the Sturgeon Point Hotel burned in 1896, the site declined as a tourist destination. It still stood out from the surrounding countryside of family farms and incorporated as a village in 1899: Ontario’s first ‘cottage community.’

In the twentieth century, with the advent of automobiles and paved roads it became much easier to access Sturgeon Point overland. This waterfront community continued to expand, and diversified. Captain Charles Gray continued to provide regular steamboat service with his Lintonia until 1931. His son, Charlie maintained and built many cottages at the Point. Over the years, ever more properties were developed into year-round residences, even as some properties have been in the family for generations.

In the early nineteenth century, before the shops of Fenelon Falls were constructed, a creek meandered towards the falls from the northwest, emptying into the Fenelon River just below the waterfall. As the ground descended sharply as it approached the falls, it would have created a small cataract to the right of the main falls. Once the village was surveyed into lots and streets, this river ran through the market square (now the Fire Hall, Cenotaph, Post Office and Library), across Francis Street, bending to run roughly parallel to Francis Street through the lots on the south side, across Colborne Street and to the river.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the village of Fenelon Falls was constructed bit by bit, as blocks of stores were built, especially along Colborne Street. Rather than building around the creek, the masonry Victorian buildings were built over top of the creek. In time, it would come to run underground in an artificial channel, much like a sewer, sometimes called ‘the Drain.’ It runs directly underneath of 30 Colborne Street (where it can be seen through a glass panel in the floor), after going underground beside the firehall.

Generally, having this creek run underground has been uneventful. However, occasionally the flow of water exceeds the capacity of the underground channel, causing the village to flood. On June 25, 2000, the sudden downpour of 76 mm of rain, caused the creek to overflow and flood the village. During the era of prohibition it was rumoured that bootleggers would keep alcohol cool in the water flowing under the buildings above. Though it is form of a development that urban planners would find problematic today, the creek under the village is one of the many unique features of the village of Fenelon Falls.

As the region that would become the Kawarthas was being surveyed during the first half of the nineteenth century, mills were water powered. Therefore, the Crown and businessmen expected that the larger cataracts would become mill sites. If a rapid or waterfall had sufficient height and flow, then it could turn a waterwheel. For much of the nineteenth century, there was an intense political lobby to construct a canal that linked the Lake Ontario and Lake Huron (now the Trent-Severn Waterway). But, prior to the advent of railways, the easiest route to the Upper Kawarthas was overland to Port Perry, then by water up the Scugog River. The last cataract before the Scugog opened up into Sturgeon Lake was at Lindsay, which gave the site a significant natural advantage.

Before it was developed, the were swamps on shores of the Scugog River—both at the present site of Lindsay, and further upstream. In 1829, William Purdy applied for the Lindsay mill site, and received it on the condition that he build a saw and gristmill by October 1, 1831. In his application he mentioned plans to build a twelve or fourteen foot high dam, and asked the Crown to absolve him of responsibility for flooding. When he did attempt to build such a high dam, it took four months for the mill pond it created to fill with water. By October 1833, he had saw and grist mills operational, near the intersection of Georgian and Ridout Streets. But his dam flooded approximately 11,000 acres, particularly in the vicinity of Lake Scugog.

In 1834 John Huston surveyed the townplot of Lindsay, which was bounded by Lindsay, Angeline, Colborne and Durham Streets. It contained 345 half acre building lots towards the river, with 30 park lots of about 5 acres each on the west side. With a Queen’s Square, and two main streets—Kent Street and Victoria Avenue—it was a village on paper. However, much of the town consisted of cedar swamp, particularly to the east, where the smaller lots were located.

Developing the waterlogged townplot of Lindsay was challenging. Charles Britton, who arrived in Lindsay in 1837, claimed that he ran a sank a twenty-foot-long pole down in the centre of Kent Street without striking solid ground. In the nineteenth century swamps were thought of as being unhealthy places. At the time, fevers called ague were common which most settlers believed were caused by miasmata—disease causing vapours released from the decomposing organic matter in swamps. Today we would call the same condition malaria, and it was deadly. Rather than it being the decomposing organic matter that was spreading the fevers, it was the countless mosquitoes breeding in the swamps.

For the immigrant families living upstream on the Scugog River, Purdy’s mill dam was outrageous. Some properties were sufficiently inundated that only the roofs of buildings could be seen above the water. As more and more people died from fevers, it became intolerable. The aggrieved settlers rose in 1838 and destroyed Purdy’s mill dam. It was rebuilt, but 1841 proved another bad year for fevers. In one location “there were scarcely living left sufficient to bury the dead.” That December rioters destroyed the mill dam again. The magistrate then concluded “it was unsafe for him to proceed against the rioters.” After much debate, the Board of Works of the Province of Canada stepped in, paid Purdy for his water rights and built a new dam downstream in conjunction with the Lindsay lock, with a head of seven feet.

In 1840, when work began on the Catholic Church on what is now the corner of Russell and Lindsay Streets—the lot was a spruce and cedar swamp. The congregation managed to erect a church in the wetland, however, parishioners were dying from malaria. Though he had been a healthy middle aged man when he arrived, by December 1843, Father Fitzpatrick’s health was no longer equal to the challenge, and he retired to Douro.

Throughout the nineteenth century, muddy streets were a common Lindsay experience. Many residents would long remember wagons sinking up their axles on the streets. In the late 19^th century, Macadam (gravel) roads became practical and vastly improved many routes in the region, but were not up to the task of filling the sink holes of downtown Lindsay. In 1910, five blocks of asphalt pavement were laid on William Street North, and finally created a smooth, convenient surface. Many of the principal streets in town were then paved between 1916 and 1918, while Richard Kylie was mayor. As the years have passed, practically the whole downtown has been filled and paved. Today, many people would be surprised to hear that downtown Lindsay was once a swamp.