KAWARTHA LAKES-In the second half of the nineteenth century, a large proportion of Haliburton County was developed into family farms. The Bobcaygeon Road, built in the late 1850s, opened the region for agricultural settlement. In the years that followed, some crossroads extended routes into the countryside. From the beginning, it was obvious that the land in this area was stony, with thin soils. There were pockets of better land, and much of the countryside was rolling, being located on the fringe of the Canadian Shield.
Gelert was originally an agricultural settlement known as Little Ireland. The Victoria Railway was constructed in the mid-1870s, connecting Lindsay and Haliburton. North of Fenelon Falls it mostly followed the Burnt River valley to avoid the rolling hills in the surrounding countryside that would have required extensive bridging and filling—in an age when all of this work had to be done manually. In the vicinity of Little Ireland, the railway was not extended through the rolling terrain to Minden—though it was already one of the larger villages in the area. Instead, Little Ireland was rechristened as Minden Station when the iron horse came to town on July 31, 1878. The new name would only last a year until the village became a post office town, Gelert, on November 1, 1879, with William F. Ritchie as the postmaster.
In the decades that followed, Gelert Station became a busy stop on the Victoria (later Midland, Grand Trunk, then Canadian National) Railway. All of the freight for surrounding communities like the Lower Dutch Line Settlement and Minden had to be teamed overland. Gelert’s first store was on lots 1-3 Station Street, operated by J.W. Watson. John Connors kept a hotel next door on Lot 4. Joseph Isaac “Ike” Sedgewick’s operated the local sawmill. The community was home to Anglican and Methodist churches—the latter met at S.S. #6 Snowdon, located at the Lower Dutch Line Settlement. The settlement had been home to a school since 1871. In 1893, a cemetery was built on the east side of the railway, across from the station.
The farm families of the Gelert area found a way to get by. Many of them worked off farm—often for lumber companies or the railway. Lumber companies also bought provisions like hay. The area was settled just as horse drawn machinery was reaching the region. The farms were cleared with axes and often planted by hand. The rolling terrain made it challenging to use horse drawn equipment. The yields could not keep pace with those from farms closer to Lake Ontario that had flatter, deeper, more fertile soils. Few of the farms made the transition to the age of tractors. Over the course of the twentieth century, forests reclaimed the hard-won family farms of generations past. By then the great lumber companies were gone, and the railway would not last much longer. Cars and trucks were faster and could reach much more of the countryside than locomotives.
The original photograph shows Gelert station in the mid twentieth century, near the end of the era when the region was farm land. The station appears near the centre of the photograph—a substantial building that could accommodate the freight being unloaded at Gelert. To the south, a corral stood to hold the livestock that the train would carry—typically moved to and from the station on their hooves. Today, the old cemetery remains beside the former site of Gelert Station, but its surroundings are hardly recognizable. Gelert station and the farms it served are a distant memory, instead the railway has become a recreational corridor. Where vehicles once parked to meet the train, today, outdoor enthusiasts set out to see the beautiful vista from the old railway trestle across the Drag River.
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
If you want to make a donation to the museum, you can e-transfer to: [email protected] or mail a cheque to :
Maryboro Lodge Museum
Box 179
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Fenelon Falls, ON
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