It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty!
This is Huntsville’s Main Street in about 1898. At that time, Huntsville wasn’t yet a town—that wouldn’t happen until January 7, 1901.
The sidewalks were wooden (granolithic sidewalks wouldn’t be installed until 1908), and the road was dirt (the first pavement would be laid between the bridge and train station in 1922), but there was already electricity running through town.
Lumber was the largest industry in Huntsville at that time, and its largest single employer was the Huntsville Lumber Company. It employed 120 men year-round and producing five million board feet of lumber annually.
A new lumber-related business came to town that year: William Craddock invented a woodworking machine that could produce a huge number of handles and filled orders of 4,000 broom handles per day for a contract in Liverpool, England.
The tannery was Huntsville’s second-largest employer, with 50 men working to manufacture 7,500 sides of sole leather per month.
You could be fined for swimming on a Sunday within the village limits.
The Muskoka Express, an extension of the Grand Trunk Railway’s express train, reached Huntsville in 1899, helping to establish the area as a tourism destination.
See more Wayback Wednesday photos here.
Photo via Vintage Muskoka District, details from Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve.
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What an impressive picture of Huntsville’s Main Street. I am impressed with the quality of the brick work, the overhead fascades, the vertical columns on several structures… and all part of the local building construction before the year 1900!
My maternal grandparents came to Huntsville in 1908, just a few years after this picture was taken. They lived here and they died here, grandpa’s career as a journeyman carpenter trained in Huntingdon, England.
Thank you, Jamie Lockwood, for sponsoring these historic images of our beautiful Huntsville.