It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty!
The Locks Mill on Brunel Road was constructed in 1871 by John Fetterly who sold it to the Cottrill family in 1907. It closed in 1954 when part of the mill foundation collapsed. It was the longest operating water-powered sawmill in Muskoka. After the mill closed, the Department of Public Works took over the site, turning it into a park. (Photo from the Estate of R.A. Hutcheson.)
See more Wayback Wednesday photos here.
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The old mills would probably be a Workman’s Compensation nightmare if WSIB had existed at that time but they would also have been vastly more interesting than a sanitized piece of park.
Not only that but they actually made money and product rather than living off tax dollars.
If we had a few of them around today still, maybe lumber would not cost so much that you need to sell your first born child in order to build a gazebo or deck.
It is, regardless of my joking, interesting history.
I can remember Boyce Cunnington’s mill at the narrows on Lake of Bays, where Shania built her cottage and where the Canada Goose clothing king now has a compound complete with helipad to avoid traffic on highway 11. Personally I still think that mill was more useful.
There must be a lot of shots of that old mill, from a variety of vantage points. There is one in Doppler, June 15 of this year and, Mar. 11, 2020 a shot of the dam after the mill is gone.
Capt. Hunt notes in his diary, that he and a group of men walked to the site in 1871, to assist with the construction of the mill.
I’m guessing, but I think the photo is pre1920. What you also see is the dam, bridge, canal and lock, all government built over the span of a couple of years (1873 to 1876?), in preparation of the coming of the steamer Northern then being built in Port Sydney. Water transport was coming to the local lakes!
There is never a photo of the ‘water-wheel’ that powered the mill, although I wish there was. My research indicates that the power for the mill, from the very beginning, was a ‘barrel style’ turbine of the type designed by Leffel in the early 1860s. A wooden barrel with an enclosed impeller, and developing about 40 hp. was the cutting edge technology that Fetterly brought to his mill.
After Fetterly, there were a few different owner/operators of the mill, but there are the papers at Heritage Place, outlining the purchase of the property by Benjamin Cottrill from John Whiteside.
John Whiteside was the owner of Whiteside Lumber; one of his mills once stood at the corner of Brunel Rd. and Park Drive.
Good one. I didn’t know there was a mill there, and such a long-running one at that.