In 1848, an American partnership purchased land near Culbertson's Wharf, building a sawmill to process logs from four million acres of timberland in the Trent River, Moira River, Salmon River and Napanee River watersheds. In 1855, Hugo Burghardt Rathbun moved to the area to take over the running of the business under the Rathbun Company name. The growing village was incorporated in 1871 as Mill Point and was renamed Deseronto in 1881. Hugo's son, Edward Wilkes Rathbun expanded the company's enterprises, opening a cedar mill, a flour mill and a sash, door and blind factory; he operated tugboats and lake freighters to carry cargo to Oswego, New York. He later added four passenger ships and, by the 1880s, held a stake in three railways: the Bay of Quinte Railway, the Napanee and Tamworth Railway and Gananoque's Thousand Islands Railway. He operated a 250-acre farm to provide horses for the logging operations and railway car shops to build rolling stock, along with general stores, a newspaper and various manufacturing works.[5] At its 1895 peak, Deseronto's population reached 3338 people and Edward Wilkes Rathbun was a millionaire; an 1896 fire on the timber docks did a quarter million dollars damage and gradual depletion of natural resources (timber and minerals) on which the Rathbun business relied brought the company's activities to a halt by 1916. The Bay of Quinte railway, originally constructed to bring Rathbun's timber to market, was sold to Canadian Northern Railway in 1910 for inclusion in their Ottawa-Toronto mainline. CNoR reached the Pacific coast by 1915, but by 1918 was bankrupt. Canadian National took over the CNoR network in 1923, embargoing the former BQR mainline in 1979 and removing the tracks in 1986.
York Region Geocachers Club, in association with Kortright Centre for Conservation, hosts the annual YRGC Weekend Geofest each Spring to introduce the general public to our game along with social and interactive opportunities for veteran geocachers. Included in those opportunities we teamed up to present the Geofest Express where all geocache varieties are available for the finding.
We have expanded out of the park to bring you a series of caches from Bolton to the northern edge of Kortright and on surrounding trails. Based on Canadian railways and passenger trains, the Geofest Express geocaches are made up of both `Park and Grabs` and an additional hiking section. No tickets are required on this historic journey. Get on the track to Geofest! ALL ABOARD!
More information on the Geofest Express and YRGC Weekend Geofest found here.