Ghost Towns of Ontario

Down a winding, rolling, semi-paved rural byway, past acres of pristine woods & babbling brooks, rocky nooks and sunny meadows stands the Old Traverston Mill.

Traverston

Location: Glenelg TWP (now West Grey), Grey County

As with so many of these forgotten towns, all that remains today is the charm of the landscape that attracted those early settlers to these areas .

Set amid the stony hills of Grey County, Traverston is typical of the many mill towns that sprang up along the tumbling waters of the Rocky Saugeen River. Known as The Queen’s Bush, this area opened to settlement around 1850, and soon mills began to appear everywhere.

In 1856, the team of Schofield and Collier built a saw and grist mill at a water power site they called Waverly. But their plans were more ambitious than that. For around the mills they proposed a proper town, laid out into lots and complete with an industrial sector that would include, in addition to their mills, a cabinet and chair factory and a machine shop. But if the historical directories showed that the fledgling town still contained only the original mills.

In 1865, they sold their holdings to John Travers, who established a post office and gave it his own name, which it bears to this day.
[Ghost Towns of Ontario: a field guide by Ron Brown, Polar Bear Press, Toronto c1997]

As with so many of these places, the railways came and by-passed them all together. All that remains today is the grist mill and a few storage buildings. There is really nothing left that suggests there was ever a village here. The mill was purchased in the 1970’s and is now a private residence.

I looked up the Census Records for 1871 for a family in Glenelg Township, Grey County, Ontario, Canada and found 1 John Travers, wife Elizabeth, with a gaggle of young ones, youngest a Richard P. Travers at 2 months.This John was born in Ireland in 1836 he was 35 years old. Quite a thing for an Irish Catholic family at that time to prosper and acquire such a profitable piece of real-estate. I wonder if this was them? I can almost picture those children perhaps playing in one of the many meadow streams, coming back all muddy, with big grins on their faces. Mom perhaps not so much. It would have been a hard life, back in those days. What they had is all they had till the next time they could get into town – which there would have been Durham. Minutes away by car today.

On these snowy, treacherous roads a family would not be going anywhere. They would be homebound almost the whole winter.

The following photos I took in May 2009, the first year I was here at the Lake. In the links below you will find a link for the Amazing Rocky Park Campground, I included that because my sister and family camped there last summer so they could take the girls fishing in the Rocky Saugeen.

This is truly a beautiful area. Lovely winding, tumbling roads with all sorts of hidden old pathways leading to now forgotten homesteads (if you know where to look).