The Whitney and Opeongo Railway (W&OR) was a

logging railway A forest railway, forest tram, timber line, logging railway or logging railroad is a mode of railway transport which is used for forestry tasks, primarily the transportation of felling, felled logs to sawmills or railway stations. In most cases th ...

Ontario, Canada Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

. It ran from

Opeongo Lake Opeongo Lake is a lake in the Saint Lawrence River drainage basin in the geographic townships of Bower, Dickson, Preston and Sproule in the Unorganized South Part of Nipissing District in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is the largest lake in A ...

Whitney Whitney may refer to: Film and television * ''Whitney'' (2015 film), a Whitney Houston biopic starring Yaya DaCosta * ''Whitney'' (2018 film), a documentary about Whitney Houston * ''Whitney'' (TV series), an American sitcom that premiered i ...

, where it connected to the

Canada Atlantic Railway The Canada Atlantic Railway (CAR) was a North American railway located in Ontario, southwestern Quebec and northern Vermont. It connected Georgian Bay on Lake Huron with the northern end of Lake Champlain via Ottawa. It was formed in 1897 through ...

(CAR), running a total distance of about . It opened in 1902 and closed in the 1920s with the end of major logging operations in the area. The southern end of the former route was taken over as the basis of

Ontario Highway 60 King's Highway 60, commonly referred to as Highway 60, is a provincially maintained highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. The highway serves as the primary corridor through Algonquin Provincial Park, where it is dedicated as the Frank McD ...

for a section west of Whitney in

Algonquin Park Algonquin Provincial Park is a provincial park located between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River in Ontario, Canada, mostly within the Unorganized South Part of Nipissing District. Established in 1893, it is the oldest provincial park in Canad ...

, while the northern end to Opeongo Lake is now used as a park access road. Only a short section of the original railbed is no longer used, abandoned when the highway was constructed further west.

History

The line was built by the St. Anthony Lumber Company, who set up

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

operations in the Whitney area starting in 1894. The mill was a major stop on the CAR, with an extensive switch yard extending on the south side of town along the east bank of Galeairy Lake. Construction of the W&OR by the Ottawa contractor Thomas McLaughlin began in May or June 1902. The line was completed in November 1902 at the relatively high cost of $200,000 due to a number of rock cuts. It entered service in June 1903. The railway was heralded as a "revolution" in the lumber industry, reducing the time to get logs to the mills to twenty-four hours, where it used to take as long as six months. The northern end of the line connected to the southern end of Opeongo Lake, one of the largest lakes in the area, allowing timber to be floated to that point from a wide area across the center of the park area. It replaced a river-based route that was some 50 miles long and took days to traverse. The line was fairly active, and by 1904 the company was running four trains a day carrying a total of 2,000 logs. The mill was purchased by the Munn Lumber company in 1910, itself recently purchased by

James Brockett Tudhope James Brockett Tudhope (March 21, 1858 – February 3, 1936) was a Canadian manufacturer and politician. Tudhope was born in Oro Township, Canada West in 1858, the son of William Tudhope, a carriage manufacturer, and Mary Reid. In 1897, h ...

, to supply hardwood to his furniture company in

Orillia Orillia is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is in Simcoe County between Lake Couchiching and Lake Simcoe. Although it is geographically located within Simcoe County, the city is a single-tier municipality. It is part of the Huronia region of Cent ...

. Munn became infamous for their

clearcut Clearcutting, clearfelling or clearcut logging is a forestry/logging practice in which most or all trees in an area are uniformly cut down. Along with shelterwood and seed tree harvests, it is used by foresters to create certain types of forest ...

ting of

, and caused a serious backlash when they proposed to cut around the

Highland Inn The Highland Inn (1908–1957) was a year-round resort hotel built and operated by the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park. It was located near the park offices on the northern edge of Cache Lake, and was a focal po ...

. In response, the Department of Lands, Forests and Mines purchased Munn for $290,000 and closed down its operations. The Whitney mill was sold to Dennis Canadian in the winter of 1912/13, who continued to use the line periodically into the 1920s. The company closed operations in 1922, and the town lost its only source of power when the millstock burned down in 1923. The line was officially abandoned in 1926. With the construction of Highway 60 beginning in the 1930s, the railbed provided a convenient route during construction. In 1905 the CAR was purchased by the

Grand Trunk Railway The Grand Trunk Railway (; french: Grand Tronc) was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The rai ...

and thus became part of

Canadian National Railways The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I railroad, Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern United States, M ...

(CN) in the 1920s. In 1933 the CAR was severed between Two Rivers and Algonquin Park Station when a

trestle ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), better known as Trestle, was a unique electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation and testing apparatus built between 1972 and 1980 during the Cold War at Sandia National Laborato ...

washed out, reportedly due to the construction of a

beaver dam A beaver dam or beaver impoundment is a dam built by beavers to create a pond which protects against predators such as coyotes, wolves and bears, and holds their food during winter. These structures modify the natural environment in such a way t ...

. By this time traffic on the line was too low to justify rebuilding the bridge, and the line operated as two separate sections. Service west of Whitney to Two Rivers ended on 31 December 1946 and the rails were lifted in the summer of 1952. This gave the W&OR wye at Whitney a new life as the main turnaround point for trains on the eastern end of the CAR. Services along the entire CAR route finally ended in the 1960s.

Route

:''Route data from ''Canadian Rail'' and matched on the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestr
Topographical Map Service
'' The line started in Whitney, running northwest out of town to pass between Whitney Lake and West Smith Lake. It then ran almost due north to Little McCauley Lake before turning almost due west to Costello Lake. On the western side of Costello it turned north-northwest until ending at Sproule Bay, the southernmost point on Opeongo Lake. Highway 60 follows the original route out of Whitney until it reaches West Smith Lake, where the highway continues northwestward, around Brewer Lake, and then rejoins the original route for a short distance to Costello. The highway then turns west-southwest and leaves the area. The section northwest of Costello is now used as the Opeongo Road.

Notes

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