Historical Tidbits
- Port Carling Locks: In 1867 navagation between Lake Rosseau and Muskoka Lake along the Baisony Rapids at Indian Village was not possible. Benjamin Hardcastle Johnson, originally from London, Ontario,and the first postmaster in Port Carling, circulated a petition asking the government to proceed with the proposed canal. Mr. Cockburn, the MPP for the district, presented the petition and Mr. Carling also from London, and the Minister of Public Works, claimed jurisdiction over the inland waterway and pushed the petition through. Small wonder then that Mr. Johnston named the village Port Carling. (Sourced from Micklethwaites' Muskoka)
- The Bala Falls were a natural falls until about 1875 when dams were constructed to moderate water levels on Lake Muskoka for navigation" The river also benefited as springtime levels on the Moon varied up to 16 feet before construction. (Muskoka Sun) The installation of the dam raised the nominal levels of Lake Muskoka by just under four feet.
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Have you ever noticed the large anchor points drilled into bedrock around the shoreline of the lakes? Ever wondered what they are for?
For the answer, we need to go back to the logging days in Muskoka when the thirst for Canadian timber was at its peak in Europe. Virtually every tree that a team of horses or oxen could haul to a lake was harvested and assembled in large containing booms and floated down the lake to mills mostly in Gravenhurst, processed and loaded on trains and sent south.
The small steam tug boats of the day did not have enough power to simply hook on to a large containing boom and haul it down the lake. Instead, a boat with a specially designed reel would hook on to the boom and let out as much cable as it needed to reach one of the hundreds of anchor points on the route south and then attach the bow of the vessel to it. After moored the power from the small engine was directed to the reel mechanism that would draw the boom towards it. The process was repeated all the way south. Those hard points are small pieces of Muskoka's rich history.