Steam Tug on Skeleton Lake

Cary DeLoye has a photo of this old steam powered, side wheeler that was on Skeleton Lake hauling lumber for his parent's cottage. Bert Shea mentions that Briese had a tug "the Saucy Jim" that pulled his log booms on Skeleton Lake. Is this the side wheeler the Saucy Jim or was there a second tug on the lake?

Skeleton Lake dam at the fish hatchery

The dam located at the south end of the lake where the lake enters into the Skeleton River/Bent River and has a long history. It apparently was first built by the white pine loggers in the 1870's to get their logs past the rapids with the least amount of damage during the spring log drive. Augusta Briese rebuilt the dam around 1884 to power his sawmill which was located right at the mouth of the river. This dam was again rebuilt when the Province built the fish hatchery in 1939 and was a timber dam with removable logs, some being  removed each fall to drop the level of the lake, then reinstalled in the spring to bring the lake to its prescribed level. Around 2000, this dam was replaced with a spill-over style dam with a fixed level. I believe there is a bypass that allows a minimum amount of water to flow into the river during the low flow in the summer to keep the river alive.

The first photo is the dam in 1958, photo courtesy of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the second is the current dam in 2006, photo taken by Pat (Cassan) Reese.

Ma Fraser's Old Sawmill

Adrienne Gilbert has this photo from her family album, Ma Fraser's Old Mill. Clarence Boles says that Fraser's mill was on the beach where the creek from Fraser Lake enters Skeleton Lake near the Watt/Stisted boundary line.

Welcome - to our first post

For the past couple of years, we have been trying to reach to people who may, at one time or another have spent time at Skeleton Lake and who have fond memories - or even "not-so-fond memories" - of the time they spent here enjoying its beauty and many attractions.

If you are one those people, we hope you will share some of those memories with us by commenting or by posting to Skeleton Lake History in the Making blog.

An Example

I've been talking to several fellow cottagers and Lake area residents, over the past several months, about their recollections on the early cottage resorts that sprang up around the lake -  mainly in the first half of the last century. My conversations with them, which I found both fascinating and very often full of humourous incidents, yielded the following list of resorts, campgrounds, and camp names:

Craigellachie

Newport House 
Newport Adventure Camp or Camp Newport (operated by the Salvation Army)
Camp Ramah
Camp Winnebagoe (an earlier incarnation of Camp Ramah)
Camp Kwasind
Camp Cheboygan (earlier name of  Camp Kwasind)
Wilson's Lodge
Craigellachie ( seen in the photo above)
Keewane Lodge (late 40's int the 50's - burned down)
Maple Bay Camp Ground 
Simolean Beach Lodge (1920's and 30's in Simolean Bay)
Muskoka Hunting and Fishing Club (1932-34 in Simolean Bay)

Do any of you folks out there have any memories, photos, or information to share on any of these places? If so, we would really appreciate your comments....

Ken Harvey