Moore Lake Community History

The following article was written by the Gull Lake Property Owners Association and reprinted here with their permission. As our close neighbour, their lake history overlaps our own and Moore Falls in mentioned throughout it.

It gives a great overview of the history of the area including some of the same early landowners on our lake such as the Wessel, Leary and Valentine families, some history of the land development and logging as well as history of Minden and area.

Area History- Gull Lake and River Area Historical Perspective

Native Canadians left their mark on the land with artifacts and rock etchings. As early as 1590, Jesuit priests travelling to Huronia, told of Iroquois war parties searching for Huron Indians along the Trent water system in what are now Peterborough, Victoria and Haliburton Counties. The Mississauga and Ojibwa hunted extensively in and around Algonquin Park in the amalgamated Townships of…

"The Land Between" is a fascinating documentary series that was on TVO in 2012-2013 on the history of parts of Ontario including the Kawartha, Haliburton and Muskoka areas. The full series can be viewed on youtube or found through their site.

http://visualheritage.ca/thelandbetween/

www.thelandbetween.ca

I found however, a short video story on Moore Lake and the origin of the name as told in a story by Fred Gregory. The Moore family from which he is descended, came from Pennsylvania and established a trading site at Moore Falls around 1816 then moved it up river to the mouth of Gull Lake. Later they settled further north in the Carnarvon area and on Big Boshkung Lake. There is a "Moorefield Farm and Moore's Point" on the south end of Big Boshkung Lake near Hwy 118 named after the same family.

Click on this link to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7yzWZC7BJs

"In this segment from "The Land…

Many guests travelling to MBL have endured a series of question from younger family members asking “Are we there yet?”! Some have reported that the questions began shortly after crossing the border, as going to Miners’ Bay was sometimes equated as going to Canada.

Everyone knows that they “are almost there” on reaching the bridges at Moore Falls. Undocumented history suggests that Mr. Moore was an early traveler who, while portaging at the end of Gull Lake, heard a commotion in the bush. He allegedly rescued a native person who was being attacked by a bear, and nursed him back to health. The site, and lake to the south, took the name of this Good Samaritan, though whether it should be Moore, Moores, or Moore’s remains uncertain.

These two Real Photo Post Cards were produced by the Minden Drug Store, and sold throughout the area. They were likely made just…

In the mid-1850s my great-grandparents, James and Annie Bryant, homesteaded the farm on East Moore Lake. They had eight children and my grandmother Mina Louise was in the middle of the pack. She attended the one-room schoolhouse on what is now called Green Gables Road. After finishing school, she moved to Toronto where she married my grandfather Christopher Wahlroth. They had two children, my father Chris and his brother Arthur who was four years younger. My grandfather died in 1919 and my grandmother went to work at the Bell Telephone Company.

In 1929, my grandmother bought the point of land between Moore and East Moore Lakes. She built three cottages on what is now called Tundra Trail. She stayed in the first cottage on the road during the summers until she built a smaller cottage on East Moore Lake that she could stay in while the other four were rented…