6751 Road 38 |
Ontario Tourism Region : The Great Waterway
Description From Owner:
- Petworth, located in Frontenac, was first settled as a lumber mill town around 1840. The mills were established by Stephenson and Lott, who began with a sawmill, followed by woollen, carding and eventually grist mills.
- In 1861, the same year the post office opened, their timber rights were acquired by the Rathbun Lumber Company.
- At its height Petworth boasted a population of about 200. It included a hotel, two grocery stores, two blacksmith shops, a Methodist church and a school. By the 1880s, it had added a second flour mill.
- A steady stream of loggers kept the hotel busy during logging season.
- By the early 1900s, Petworth's days as a lumber town had come to an end. Sixty years of steady logging had decimated the surrounding lumber supply.
- Petworth also had the misfortune to be bypassed by the railway, which left its remaining industries at a serious disadvantage.
- Petworth was never completedly abandoned. By the late 1990s, it still contained a handful of residents and a number of interesting old structures, such as a derelict schoolhouse, an old blacksmith shop, and the ruins of the mill.
- (from Ghost Town Pix)
Address of this page: http://www.ruralroutes.com/Petworth