It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty!
Built by Gordon Hill in 1921, Limberlost had 200 miles of trails for riding, hiking and cross-country skiing. In 1941, Snow Trains transported tourists from Buffalo, Rochester and Toronto up to Limberlost. And now, December 2022, how about a Snow Trains to ship snow out of here? (Muskoka Digital Archives).
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I enjoyed John Earl’s article. Huntsville has so much interesting history .I love to hear the stories of winter sports in the Huntsville area . If the Ontario Northland train is started again maybe it is time for a winter snow train again .
In 1921 Gordon Hill and a friend bought property on Solitaire Lake, north east of Huntsville in Sinclair Twp. and opened a resort they called Limberlost. It had a rustic appeal, with tenting platforms and hiking trails through the property, but what set it apart from other resorts of the era were its seasons. From the time it opened , Limberlost was a year-round resort.
Gordon reasoned that Muskoka’s sparkling snows were just as appealing as its sparkling waters, particularly to people who spent their days in the increasingly grey snows of the cities. He suffered set-backs, his first lodge burned to the ground in 1922, but his idea began to catch on. At first , its very novelty attracted attention. A newsreel film was shot there, and newspaper articles were written about this unusual vacation in the heart of the frozen woods. And the guests came. They skied the trails around Lake Solitaire, tobogganed down its hills. They carved 150 miles of skiing trails through the property . And in 1934 Muskoka got its first official ski hill when the Top of the World opened at Limberlost.
Before long , Huntsville was at the heart of a winter tourism boom. Inspired by Gordon’s success and guided by visionary mayor J. Frank Kelly, Huntsville embraced winter. The town chartered special ski Trains and hosted as many as three winter carnivals a year, and despite the Depression, thousands of visitors came to enjoy the winter snows . The streets were lit with Christmas lights, dogsleds carried visitors from the train station to their hotels, and local residents were encouraged to dress in bright colours when ever the ski trains were in town. An active ski club cut still more trails and built ski jumps, including one at Mica Mine Hill that was, at 170 feet long, the third biggest in the World. Newsreels proclaimed Huntsville to be ” the Premier Winter Resort in Ontario , ” and newspapers across the province compared Huntsville to Lake Placid, host of the 1932 Winter Olympics.
Huntsville had another ski-jump at the south end of town, also a number of other ski hills including Tally Ho , Curlew ski hill adjacent to the old Ski Jump Inn hill, still going strong of course is Hidden Valley. In years past the White ‘s operated a fairly large resort called Britannia Hotel on the lake of Bays including a ski hill with a tow rope, I think that they also had curling facilities. Further north just outside of Kearney Echo Hill or Echo Ridge was another by gone ski hill with rope tows .