Port
Carling is an unincorporated community
in and since 1971 municipal seat of the
Township of Muskoka Lakes in the Canadian
province of Ontario. It has several hundred
year-round residents and is a service
centre for thousands of other seasonal
residents in the area. Besides the town
itself, which maintains much of its older
architecture, there are several tourist
and cultural sites. Port Carling is located
on the Indian River and owes its importance
to its key position on the water routes
of the area. A set of locks joins Lake
Muskoka and Lake Rosseau, so much boat
and ship traffic in the township passes
through, hence its nickname Hub of the
Lakes. The community is directly located
on the two-lane Highway 118, and improvements
to Highway 69 now link it to the controlled-access
freeway Highway 400 and the sometimes
divided Highway 11. This has greatly facilitated
its increasing role as a tourist destination
from the Toronto area.
The
Ojibway Indians settled in the area in
the 1850s. They called their settlement
Obajewanung or Obogawanung, while Europeans
called it Indian Gardens. Before white
settlers moved into the newly surveyed
Medora Township starting in the 1860s,
the Ojibway moved to Parry Sound but continued
to summer in Port Carling. In 1869, Benjamin
Hardcastle Johnston established a post
office here called it Port Carling. John
Carling, the Ontario Minister of Public
Works, was a booster of the locks between
the lakes which were completed in 1871.
This led to an economic boom fuelled by
tourism and logging, resulting in the
building of four resorts, two sawmills
and three Protestant churches of the 1870s.
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