Exploration: Round Algonquin Park 2017 via TCAT and Cobalt - Part 1

In 2016 I completed a solo, 1200km, three-day dualsport route clockwise around Algonquin Park (RAP) starting in Almonte, just west of Ottawa. It was hot, dusty, and challenging--particularly on the first day through the Bancroft area south of the Park, where there are long sections of rutted, technical trail far from support--but lots of fun. Most of the route followed the TCAT up to North Bay, then picked up on the Algonquin Dualsport Route described in the Backcountry Routes guide.

This summer, I repeated the route and doubled it by exploring further along the TCAT past Sudbury, looping over to the fantastic historic town of Cobalt at Lake Temiskaming and rejoining my original route at Mattawa. The theme this time was to spend more time exploring the many ghost towns and old mines along the way, and to get a better sense of the local history. The map below shows my planned route, but--and as you'll see later--some of it proved impassable and I had to go around.



Altogether this year's ride took six long days, four of which consisted of torrential downpours, soaked clothing, and mud. Lots of alone-time in the helmet, absorbing the vast expanse of our beautiful and rugged province, talking to myself, and contemplating the merits of maybe getting a slightly larger motorcycle for future adventures. But my bulletproof WR250R was once again a total champ and got me through unscathed.

Unfortunately, whereas last year my phone died after day one and I could no longer take pictures, this year it was the turn of my new Garmin 64st to crap out, which happened on the last day with the result that I lost all my trip data. This is my third such Garmin in just over year. The previous 64st (which was replaced under warranty) and before that a 60cs all died on their own for random reasons. Without a reliable guide to the turnoffs, on the last day I was forced to abandon the interesting backcountry trails taking me home to Almonte from Mattawa that I had followed last year.

Overall it was a fantastic ride with a good mix of technical trails, stunning scenery, historic detours, and a total mining geek-fest in Cobalt. Highly recommended for small- to mid-sized adventure bikes with at least 250km range and ideally 350km range (in my case, achieved with a 12L tank and 4L RotoPax). You should also spring for a trail pass from TheTrail.ca, since the funds help the Eastern Ontario Trail Association access and maintain these beautiful locations to ride.

My bike set-up and travel gear was essentially the same as last year: lightweight, camping-oriented, and with tools, spare tubes, and minimal food and clothing. However, whereas last year I rode on full knobbies, this year I rode on Mitas E-09 50/50 tires in arguably worse trail conditions, yet they performed very well. Given the long stretches of unavoidable pavement this time around, I actually preferred not being on knobbies. Another key change was having my suspension re-valved last fall, and installing a stiffer shock spring. This made all the difference in the sand, whoops, and ruts--no major control issues at all despite being a loaded bike.

My route out of Almonte followed my local trail sauce before connecting with the TCAT. Lots of dirt roads with some roller-coasters thrown in.

The section north of Dalhousie Lake is rugged and beautiful - well worth a day ride from the Ottawa area. 

Here's typical evidence that today's hamlets were much more vibrant (and populous) communities a hundred years ago:

On Buckshot Lake Rd., my route was supposed to turn west onto Brooks Lake Rd. as dirt way through to Highway 41, but this proved to be a dead-end not far past a lonely homesteader's cabin. The only sign of life on this road was, improbably, an immaculate new Mercedes SUV that was crawling over the boulders and steep hills behind me, presumably to access the lake at the dead-end. Yee-haw. Last year I tried a different route through this section, but I got stumped then too. Many years ago I did a mountain bike ride through this area as part of a 24-hour adventure race, but I have yet to rediscover that route which wound over to the top of Mazinaw Lake.

No choice but to turn back to Buckshot Rd. and follow it around through Vennachar to Ferguson Corners. From there, the route on Smith Lake Road was a long, beautiful ride on sandy dirt with a few rough and wet sections and vestiges of pioneer cabins now as hunt camps and shelters. This is a highly recommended section to ride on almost any bike, also within reach of a day-trip from Ottawa.

One of the notable stops along this remote section was the ghost town of the Bessemer Iron Mine (1899-1914), which required a northern detour to reach a former rail bed to the mine. This is well worth a look although the mine site proper is now closed off on private property. A great video of the mine site on the private property is available here. 

Here's the right turn onto the former rail bed to Bessemer: 

Before long, you reach the site where a town of about 300 miners and their families once toiled for a better future. Just to the left of where my bike is parked you can see where the old rail bed runs into a rock cut in the woods, and from there to the mine head as shown in an old photo below. 

This same location on the road is actually the former "downtown" area of the community, with boarding houses, shops, post office, etc. On the  right (south) side of the road, hidden in the trees, is an intriguing hole blasted out of the rock, with what appears to have been stonework around the top. A book by Dave Hanes about the mine's history (details below) suggests this feature was built as a cold storage to serve a large log boarding house, the east end of which was located about 40 feet west of the hole.

Just east the blasted hole and on the same side of the road is a large and impressive stone foundation. Hanes's book records an interview with one of the local old-timers who worked at the mine, who said the old log boarding house had no foundation and was built right on the ground (indeed, I saw was no obvious evidence of a foundation beside the hole/root cellar). This stone foundation was built for a hotel and never finished: "never had a board on it" said the old-timer. There are apparently some other foundations in the general area, but I didn't have much time to explore. 

This small hunting cottage was, I think, originally the company store for the mine.

A small stream drains from Mullet Lake (seen below) into Little Mullet Lake (where most of the mining occurred). Here's where the stream crosses under a culvert in the trail. A sawmill was located here. A diver who explored the lake bottom near this site found the remains of a log sleigh and team of horses that presumably fell through the ice back when the mine was running.

According to an old site map, the Bessemer school house was located on the left shoreline of Little Mullet Lake as seen in this picture from the road/railbed. 

For more detailed information about the history of the Bessemer Mine, Dave Hanes's book "Iron Mining at Bessemer 1899-1914, The Hand of Father Time" (ISBN 0-88954-424-7) is an excellent resource. Hanes conducted extensive research at the site and interviewed key old-timers in the area--the stories are entertaining and provide a fascinating perspective on a era of early European settlement in Ontario that has all but disappeared into the bush. You can order the book from Darlene at the bookstore in Cobalt (more on that later). Here's a view of the main mine workings, I believe from a perspective near the end of the overgrown rail line through the rock cut shown in a picture above. 

The overgrowth and bugs proved too obstinate for me to explore here further, so I carried on with my main adventure and headed on to Bancroft. 

After Bancroft comes one of the most challenging sections of trail on the whole route: Pencil Lake Road. It's a heavily rutted, rocky ATV/Jeep trail that nevertheless is a riding highlight of the whole route. Last year I followed this road to its end near Irondale (another ghost town), but there was one particularly rough section with a deep swamp that required bypassing via a steep climb and descent over a large knoll of bedrock. Given the torrential rains this year, my slower progress overall, and the likelihood of much more standing water on the section of the trail, I decided to avoid the risk in favour of investigating an alternate route. The TCAT showed a detour from Pencil Lake Rd. north onto Hadlington Rd., which in theory should've avoided the need to ride through Pencil Lake Rd's long sections of standing water. Indeed, the bypass started out just fine:

Then it quickly devolved into hellish mud pits which I was barely able to ride with my 50/50 tires, despite a relatively light bike. Fortunately I had thought to bring a handsaw with me, so I was able to remove some strategic branches and pass beside several of these holes. However, I got stuck in a few holes that were slimy, sucky, deep mud (2 feet deep in some places). It was pretty miserable trying to pull myself out while of course a storm arose and raged around me. I absolutely do not recommend this alternate route for larger bikes. It was one hole after another for a few kilometers, few of which offered a way around that could be navigated with bags on. Definitely one of the worst (or, should I say "character-building") sections on the whole trip. In retrospect I would take Pencil Lake Rd. all the way again, because if memory serves me, much of the trail had a rocky base and lacked this type of silty mud.

Suwan's Thai Restaurant in Minden made a welcome and tasty (but slow) dinner stop before heading north towards my first camp near Huntsville. The owner and his Thai wife split their time between Minden and Thailand, and have collected all manner of ephemera which is displayed (and for sale) in their popular restaurant. 

Two days before, a tornado had ripped through the Baysville area north of here. The trails in that section are active forestry roads and they were saturated, rutted, washed out, and covered in storm debris. No pictures; I was tired, wet, and scrambling to get through in one piece as dusk arrived. After a long paved section I finally reached my first camp at our family's cabin on Lake Solitaire.

Here's a view of the cabin, which my parents bought from a close family friend whose father had built (and stocked) the cabin around 1920. No electricity, no water. Still rustic like the pioneer cabins back then.

Part 2 covers my progress further along the TCAT through the forests, ghost towns, and sandy glacial till that stretch north of Huntsville well up past Sudbury. New challenges, new things to see, and finally some pictures of the route since I wasn't able to get any last year!  

Exploration: Mohr's Road, Fitzroy Township (Updated)

An ongoing pursuit of mine has been to explore ghost roads and pioneer settlements in unexpected proximity to Ottawa. For instance, in 2008 when I worked in the Ottawa high-tech suburb of Kanata, I prided myself on finding a route that enabled me to commute from my home in Almonte, a distance of about 35 km, almost entirely on dirt roads and bush tracks requiring full knobby tires. At the time there was only one fully paved direct road from Almonte to the nation's capital--rather remarkable in this modern era. While that particular option has been greatly "improved" since then, there are many other forgotten byways to explore nearby.

One such byway is Mohr's Road, which runs south-east from its start in the hamlet of Galetta. In the mid-1800s, the Fitzroy area was becoming an important settlement area and stop along routes north to the lumber camps and other pioneer settlements. By 1853, the hamlet of Mohr's Corners began to take shape--and eventually got its name--as the result of efforts by the German settler Ephraim Mohr:

Today Mohr's Corners is a bona-fide ghost town with little remaining to suggest its former importance. Mohr's beautiful stone home (see picture below) is gone, but the former schoolhouse remains today as a private residence.

By the early 1900s, the village of Galetta just a mile up the road had taken over as the local centre of bustling activity, driven by its access to valuable water power from the Mississippi River, and the thriving Kingdon Lead Mine nearby. Kingdon Mine, now a ghost site, was once one of the most productive lead mines in North America. Today it's mostly forgotten except by locals. However, in Google satellite view you can still see the mine tailings as an obvious white patch on Morris Island.

Here's a period map of Fitzroy township in Carleton County where Mohr's Road is clearly depicted leaving the green squares of Galetta:

Mohr's Road is now unremarkable except where the modern section abruptly ends south-east of Mohr's Corners and assumes its original pioneer character:

Obviously this grassy track was too irresistible to pass up--even at dusk--so there I went. Later, using Photoshop, I superimposed Google satellite imagery over the original map above to see how the remnants of the road follow the original surveyed road allowance. It's pretty clear that the Mohr's Road of the old map aligns with some intriguing trails found on site. Moreover, the old map suggests that right in this area were some farms with buildings. I didn't notice any evidence of them but will investigate on a future trip.

The above grassy section passes through some heavily rutted sections full of thick clay mud before it finally emerges at Grant's Side Road:

If you head east down Grant's Side Road a few hundred metres, you'll enter an impressively dark tunnel formed by a remnant of the original forest that would've covered the entire area.

Back at Mohr's Road, the trail continues past Grant's Side Road as this tempting track. Since the maps suggest it follows the road allowance, it too was irresistible to explore:

In simply crossing the road, the fertile clay soil gave way to the unforgiving limestone pavement that is common throughout the region west of Ottawa.

The pioneers who arrived here only to find that their 200 acre land grant was useless rock must've been heartbroken--all the more so if the neighbour's land was fully productive soil. It's no wonder this section of the trail was abandoned. Continuing along the trail reinforced my suspicions. Here the trail entered a low, forested area. The thin soil has eroded down to bedrock and, clearly, this section is probably flooded in wet conditions:

The trail became more Hansel-and-Gretel-ish, but according to my GPS still followed the road allowance. Can you imagine dragging a wagon through this?

Soon after it entered a swamp that I wasn't going to attempt to ride through. I explored a well-travelled trail around the swamp for a short distance, but it devolved into a maze of ATV trails. Since there was no clear way to follow the road allowance, I turned back and looked for the exit at the other end, off Panmure Road.

Update

The map and satellite suggested that the far end of the Mohrs Road is almost certainly what is now Morningdove Drive in a newish subdivision off Panmure Road. Here's what it looks like at that location:

An old road leads straight into the bush. Looking back towards the subdivision it seems pretty obvious:

But heading in the other direction, the well-travelled track veers left soon after passing a downed tree, and the part that continues straight along the road allowance peters out rather fast:

Yep, that's the road passing straight back through the scrub in the middle of the picture below! 

Many indications that this area is actively hunted. 

From here I was able to reconnect with the route I'd taken from the other end at Grant's Side Road, which would enable me to complete a run of the historic Mohr's Road, right on Ottawa's doorstep. However, the obvious, well-travelled trail bends east around the road allowance before meeting up again with the straight section on the road allowance. Heading straight into the bush along the road allowance doesn't seem to be a viable option.

Lost Mines of Lanark County - Part 4: The Places and the Players

The mines we’ll look at in more detail have connections to the following communities just west of Ottawa. All but Calabogie fall within Lanark County.

  

The area east of a north-south line running through Almonte and Carleton Place consists mainly of exposed limestone formations, including the unique Burnt Lands Alvar a few kilometers to the east of Almonte. The limestone here reveals only a few of the most primitive marine fossils (e.g. shellfish and trace fossils) but lacks the spectacular fossils of later eras because the glaciers long since ground away all the more recent fossil-bearing layers.  

To the west of this line rises the Canadian Shield, which forms an obvious ridge just outside Almonte and runs north to Pakenham along the Mississippi River valley. This ridge once formed the western shore of Lake Champlain, an inland sea that connected to the St. Lawrence River valley and the Atlantic Ocean after the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. Visible evidence of the ancient shoreline today includes the broad sand deposits along the Old Perth Road just west of Almonte, which were once beaches probably teeming with seals, walruses, and other creatures. Today the Lanark highlands is full of swamps and lakes that formed in the pits and valleys scoured out by the glaciers in the hard, impervious rock.

The geology of Lanark County promoted the formation of mineral deposits with industrial value. In the early 1800s, government surveyors exploring the area discovered this extensive mineral potential. They noted that compass readings were affected in some areas where the geology was known to be conducive to iron ore formation, suggesting the presence of significant deposits.

Mapping studies over the next few decades revealed a trend of north/south strikes, particularly along the area that eventually became the route of the K&P Railway. Some of the major mines that we’ll examine are indicated with red dots in the picture below; the dots along the left follow the K&P. For the most part these are iron mines, but deposits of silver, gold, copper, and other minerals were also identified. The discovery of potentially rich mineral deposits, combined with the waning square timber industry and the rising pulpwood industry, set the stage for developing roads, rails, mines, and settlement in Lanark County.

By 1871 construction of the K&P was well underway. As it pushed north, small communities around the pulpwood and mining industries sprang up. Some politics was involved as well: the original route of the K&P was well to the north of its current route in the area of Lavant Station. 

Note on the map the location of "Iron Mine" in the bottom left corner. This is the Wilbur mine. The community marked "Lavant" is not to be confused with Lavant Station, which was  incorporated by William Caldwell as "Iron City" in 1881 when the railway arrived.  

The influence of one of the local industry magnates—probably Boyd Caldwell or his nephew William (who was pursuing a mine near what became Flower Station)—got the route pushed south to its present location. Compare with the map above. 

Who were the Caldwells?

To understand the mines you need to understand the people behind them. The Caldwell name is unavoidable in this context. There were many Caldwells: they were movers and shakers, and many of them had the same name—which creates a lot of confusion when trying to understand exactly who did what. The Caldwells must’ve recognized this ambiguity, because sometimes they added or changed their names to help distinguish each other. As best as I can figure out by correlating reliable dates for births, deaths, and reports, these are the key Caldwells with respect to the mining story.

A key insight is that it was the cousins Thomas Boyd Caldwell and William Clyde Caldwell who had the main mining interests. Fortunately, both had distinguished political careers (federally, Thomas; provincially, William), which means there's a good public record on their activities. Unfortunately, their political record overshadows their personal business record and makes it hard to sift out any details about the mines. My sense is that their interest in mining was very much a sideline activity, with politics and running their main timber and woolen mill interests being their main focus. 

Thomas’s father, Boyd, began mining the Wilbur site in January 1880, before the arrival of the K&P in 1881. I haven’t been able to find much detail about mining activity at Wilbur before 1880, although some test pits were probably dug. Indeed, mining reports for 1884 note that early development had long since been abandoned and that little was known about prior activity beside some anecdotes from speaking with the Caldwells. The Wilbur mine will be covered in a lot more detail in a future post.  

The ambiguous names also create some mysteries about which descriptions relate to which mine sites. At the time, everyone knew who “Caldwell” was and understood the proper context when referring to “the Caldwell mine”. The available record often doesn’t clarify which mine is the subject; there’s just a reference to yet another “Caldwell” mine. This is further compounded by the frequent change in ownership of different mine sites, some eventually bought back by earlier owners. Throughout this evolution, even a mine that is named in a contemporary record may not reflect the true ownership. Locals probably knew it by one name, and people elsewhere may have used different names. Figuring out which descriptions relate to which mines requires building a timeline of activity at each location, reviewing ownership records, and correlating with other dated information. I’ve attempted to do this where possible and my story reflects my best understanding of the record.

In addition to their timber operations, Boyd Caldwell and his son Thomas ran the Appleton woolen mill, the ruins of which are still visible today at the falls in Appleton.

Alexander Caldwell, Boyd’s brother and himself a timber baron, built “Clyde Hall”, a beautiful stone home in the town of Lanark. 

An interesting footnote to this story is the dispute Boyd Caldwell had with Peter McLaren, another timber baron in the region. At issue was who could access waterways for the running of squared timber which was sent down the rivers to eventually reach the Ottawa lumber yards. At the time, waterways such as the Mississippi, Fall, and Clyde Rivers in Lanark County were privately owned—usually by the timber barons. The dispute eventually reached one of the highest courts in England and was finally won by the Caldwells, establishing the principle that waterways are open to all. As a result of this case, Canadians today enjoy access to most waterways and lakes across the country.

Here’s a picture of the K&P locomotive #9, the “Boyd Caldwell”, which probably dates to around 1886-1887. Boyd Caldwell died in 1888 so it’s likely this locomotive was named for him rather than his son Thomas Boyd, who would only be in his early 30’s and probably not yet wealthy (or socially established) enough to have his own eponymous toy.

Not to be outdone, in 1887 William Caldwell (who was 14 years older than his cousin Thomas and already an MPP) also scored himself a personalized locomotive, the K&P #10.  By this time the K&P railway to Renfrew had been complete for three years, so what better way to celebrate?

In the next post we’ll look into the mining technology of the day because it serves as another important basis to understand the historic record, and to interpret site features.

Lost Mines of Lanark County - Part 3: Why mine?

Examining the historical context of mining in Canada—and in particular in Lanark County in the late 1800s—can give us a better understanding of how sites like the Wilbur iron mine came to be developed.

There are many interesting economic parallels between the respective technology booms of the Victorian era and our modern era. The late 1800s represented the peak of Victorian industrialization, with bull markets for machinery and the commodities needed to make those machines and then produce goods with them.  This was especially so in North America, where population expansion westwards and the rapid growth of cities and railroads following the US Civil War created a high demand for iron. If you were an engineer wanting to develop cutting-edge technology, this was a great time to be an entrepreneur. From trains to the evolution of high-rise buildings, every industry was pushing the limits of technology at the time—much like how the dot-com era pushed limits a century later. At the same time, with the rise of powerful steamships, there was both a capability and appetite for global trade in raw commodities.

For a young nation like Canada at the time, the period after Confederation in 1867 saw the confluence of economic boom, waves of skilled and unskilled immigrants arriving from Europe, and strong interest from emerging joint stock companies looking to invest in and develop the relatively uncharted riches of Canada’s virgin territory. There was a lot of money to be made. An obvious opportunity was to enhance the value chain from ore to manufactured goods. In Eastern Ontario and especially in Kingston, this was probably seen to be the “next big thing” for a young nation to pursue as the longstanding square timber trade began to wane following a hundred years of depleting the region’s virgin stands.

In Eastern Ontario in the 1880s, Ottawa was still very much a lumber town transitioning into its new role as the nation’s capital where fun would be forgotten. Kingston was the de facto industrial, military, and political centre of the region, being well situated on the shore of Lake Ontario where it served as an important nexus of lake, road and rail traffic between Upper and Lower Canada and the U.S. It was also home to the KingstonLocomotive Works.

Kingston Locomotive Works, 1880:

Kingston’s appetite for iron foretold demand for a local iron smelter. There was already good lake access to U.S. coal needed to fire the blast furnaces, and preliminary surveys of the area north of Kingston revealed indications of iron ore along the north-south interface between the predominate limestone formations to the east, and the Canadian Shield rising up to the west. However, up to 1870, local iron mining was an intermittent activity conducted in small, mostly hand-worked operations. Ore was generally mined and taken away in the winter, when hauling was cheap and frozen lakes and rivers facilitated access. While many questions remained about the actual extent of iron deposits north of Kingston and whether they would be adequate to supply local industry, the combination of railway expansion in general and the need to facilitate the exploration and extraction of timber and minerals proved irresistible to investors. Construction of the K&P (itself an epic tale) started in 1871, optimistically aiming for Pembroke.

Here's a K&P locomotive in 1885:

Skipping ahead to the early 1890s, there was finally serious talk of building an iron smelter in Kingston. This would be a significant industrial undertaking, probably similar to the Cambria Iron and Steels blast furnace shown below in Pennsylvania in 1906.  

Although the K&P had reached Renfrew by 1884, ten years later there was still no definitive survey of the iron ore potential along the rail line. Finally, in 1895 and then again in 1900, E. D. Ingall of the Geological Survey conducted detailed field surveys to ascertain the extent of iron ore along the K&P. His work included visits to mines and interviews with mine owners, including cousins W. C. Caldwell and Boyd Caldwell of the mines at Flower Station and Wilbur, respectively. Ingall’s 93-page report [Report on the Iron Ore Deposits along the Kingston and Pembroke Railway in Eastern Ontario; Geological Survey of Canada, 1901] is an entertaining and rich source of first-hand information about the state of mining in Lanark County. The survey map included with this report also forms an important basis for interpreting the Wilbur site, as I’ll show in a future post.

In the next post, we’ll examine the geographical context of the lost mines and provide some orientation for more detailed discussion.