Tag Archives: Grindstone Creek

Waterdown

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July 5, 2025

The first Europeans arrived at the future site of Waterdown in 1669. The indigenous people had been living there since at least 7,500 BC. Following Treaty No. 3 the area was laid out for settlement with one of the first settlers being Alexander Brown who bought 800 acres of land and built a log cabin and saw mill above the Great Falls in 1802. Ebenezer Griffin bought much of this land and divided it into town lots in 1830. He was largely responsible for the founding and development of Waterdown. The image below shows the 1877 County Atlas of the town.

The former factory at 40 Mill Street North has had many functions over the years. It was built prior to 1870 as this is the date of record for its purchase by Charles Sealey. It has served as a flour and feed mill, was home to many stores and a toy factory. In 1925 Harlan Stetler and George Nicholson bought the building and opened their jam factory. It operated into the 1980s before closing. It is currently in use as offices for an engineering firm.

The Town Hall site was purchased in 1856 and was opened two years later. It was constructed from limestone which was quarried locally. The structure was used as the town library from 1979 to 2015. Two grave stones of early Waterdown settlers were located inside the library. The markers for Alexander Brown and Merren Grierson were moved to the new library and the building was renovated to house a law firm.

The Traders Bank operated in Waterdown from 1909 to 1921 and was located in the building on the north west corner of Mill Street and Dundas Street. The building has been used for several purposes over the succeeding years and is currently home to Pickwick Books.

One would think that the most valuable books in the store would be kept in the old bank safe. However, what we found inside was biographies about Canadian Prime Ministers and American Presidents.

The site on the south west corner of Mill and Dundas streets was originally the location of the first log school building in the area. The American House hotel was built in 1824 and has been a permanent fixture in town ever since. At one time there were seven hotels in operation in town but only this one remains. At least a dozen different owners have operated the hotel over the years and these records appear to be incomplete. The hotel was closed during prohibition but was reopened in 1933. It has been extensively renovated with the original floors, tin ceiling and stand up bar being removed. We had a nice lunch here while visiting the town.

The side of the American Hotel has been modified over the years. There is a round arch that can be seen above the centre window on the ground floor in the image below. It used to allow the carriages to come into the building in bad weather to let guests to disembark with some shelter from the weather.

Workers cottages can be found in several places in Waterdown with this three unit example being found on Mill Street South. These ones are for sale along with the property. Let’s hope they don’t get demolished.

Maplebank was built on town lot 12 and included limited water rights to Grindstone Creek. Henry Ferguson Graham was an entrepreneur and tanner by trade. His water rights allowed him to grind bark for tanning and operate his equipment. The stone house was built in 1847 and replaced an earlier one story frame house.

The former Methodist Church stands beside the Town Hall. The date stone above the door says Wesleyan Methodist Church Re-erected 1865. The 1840 frame church had been built for $1400.00. In 1865 the building was covered in stone and a Sunday School was added at the rear in 1880. The building became the United Church in 1925 with the union of Methodists and Presbyterian Churches. In 1957 a new church building was erected and this one is now used by a consulting firm.

The Presbyterians began meeting in Waterdown in the 1820s, most likely in the schoolhouse in Vinegar Hill. In 1855 a stone church was built which can still be seen behind the brick church on the corner of Mill Street and Church Street. The brick building in the front was erected in 1901 at a cost of $5,000. The section at the rear is where the kitchen and washrooms were built in 1959-1960. They were demolished and replaced with the present extension in 1997.

Across the street from the American House sits the original general store which was built by Ebenezer Griffin around 1824 along with the hotel. These were some of the first permanent buildings erected along The Governor’s Road (now Dundas Street) in Waterdown.

Several other vintage stores line Mill Street

Following Mill Street south will bring you to The Great Falls on Grindstone Creek. The view below is from the viewing platform but we have a series of pictures from below the falls in our Slacking In Smokey Hollow story.

Waterdown was one of the early industrial centres in Upper Canada and has managed to retain much of it’s historic stone architecture. It is certainly worth investigating if you are in the area.

Related stories: Slacking In Smokey Hollow

Google Maps Link: Waterdown

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The Bruce Trail – Waterdown

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Saturday, June 1, 2019

We had previously visited the falls in Waterdown in the winter and decided to return to see what the summer was like on the local trails.  There is free parking right beside the waterfalls which have gone by several names over the years including The Great Falls, and Grindstone Falls.  Our earlier story featured slackliners walking across the gorge above the falls and we called it Slacking in Smokey Hollow.  We followed Grindstone Creek downstream until we came to the Norman Pearson Side Trail.  This connects to the McNally Side Trail and returns you to the main trail.  There is an additional little side trail called the Upper Grindstone Side Trail that was part of the package.

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The Smokey Hollow Side Trail is only 50 metres long and connects the main trail to a viewing platform for Grindstone Falls.  The platform can be seen in the picture below and it provides an interesting view of the crest of the falls.  The Bruce Trail follows Grindstone Creek and has a set of stairs built into the side of the ravine to allow easier descent.  From the bottom a short trail leads back toward the bottom of the falls but be careful, we witnessed a guy showing off for his girlfriend who fell into the creek and got completely soaked.  If he would have been injured he’d have required a complicated rescue.

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From there we followed the main trail along side Grindstone Creek.  This trail gives plenty of great views of the creek as it cascades over the large chunks of dolomite that have been eroded over the past 12,000 years since the last ice age retreated.

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When you reach more level ground you can depart from the main trail onto the Norman Pearson Side Trail.  This 1.4 kilometre blue trail will bring you out to Waterdown Road where you can connect with the McNally Side Trail.  Both of these side trails are marked with blue blazes on the trees.  There’s also a couple of places where the trail is ablaze with blue from forget-me-nots.

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Lily of the valley is a highly poisonous plant that is native to Asia and Europe and has been introduced to North America as a garden plant.  It does well and can grow into large clusters under the right conditions.  The scent of the flower has been imitated for perfume and Kate Middleton carried lily of the valley in her bridal bouquet when she married Prince William.

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The Mayapples are finally in bloom with a single flower on each fertile plant.  These flowers will close up in a few days and begin to develop into the fruit.  The fruit will turn yellow when it ripens later in the summer.

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Near Waterdown there is a Bitternut Hickory tree that is estimated to be 128 years old and has a lifespan of 200 years.  It produces a large amount of very bitter tasting nuts that even the squirrels will only eat during food shortages.  There are 16 Bruce Trail heritage trees that have been identified along the route.  Their GPS locations can be found at this link.

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The properties that the trail runs through are mostly private farms and access is allowed by the good graces of the land owner.  Some of the land grants were poor farming land and have been allowed to return to forest.  Other areas are still operated as family farms, some of them into the fourth and fifth generations.  Many of these farmers still have old farm implements from their father or grandfather.  Somehow the seat on the old plow below doesn’t look very comfortable nor do the steel studded wheels look like they absorb much shock.

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The McNally Side Trail is only 0.48 kilometres long and brings you back to the main trail above Waterdown.  The Upper Grindstone Side Trail follows a lightly used path through a grassy field and back into the forest.  When you come to the little loop you can go left and down to the creek or you can go to the right and climb higher onto the ridge before descending to creek level.  It will then return you to the main trail very near to the parking lot.  Evidence of a former dam at the top of the falls is a reminder of the industrial past of this site.  Hidden among the trees on both sides of the creek are other traces of previous buildings, just waiting to be discovered and explored.

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This set of side trails along with the accompanying main trail make for an interesting loop which has the equivalent of 41 flights of stairs as it goes up and down the sides of the ravine.

Google Maps Link:  Great Falls Smokey Hollow

Check out the top 20, reader selected stories from our first five years: Back Tracks: 5 Years of Trails.

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Slacking In Smokey Hollow

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Saturday Jan. 23, 2016

Grindstone Creek flows through Waterdown where it drops over the Great Falls, runs past the former mills of Smokey Hollow then descends the lengthy Grindstone Cascade.  In the 1800’s it provided water power for a selection of mills and industries in the valley below the falls.  Alexander Brown held the original land grant and he built a saw mill at the top of the falls near the current parking lot.  Ebenezer Griffin bought half of Brown’s land and built a mill in the valley below.  in 1830 he had his property surveyed for building lots and the town was born.   Soon other mills were built along the creek to create Waterdown’s industrial hub.   Saw, grist, flour and woolen mills, tanneries and foundries along with factories for rakes, staves, cradles and baskets all arrived.  With the mills came smoke and soon the nick-name Smokey Hollow was being applied to the area. Steam replaced water wheels to turn the machines in the mills and by the early 1900’s electricity was the common form of power.  Competition, shifting markets and fires led to the loss of all industry in the valley and today there are few traces of the milling community left.

Great Falls, also known as Grindstone Falls, Boundary Falls and Waterdown Falls is 10 metres high and 5 metres wide.  The softer Rochester Shale has eroded away below the harder dolostone of the Lockport Formation on top leaving an overhang that will eventually break away as the falls moves slowly upstream.  It is possible to see the rock strata behind the curtain of ice should one climb behind it.

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On the west side of the creek are the remains of an oval structure.  The poured concrete on top suggests a construction date in the 1900’s.

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Grindstone Creek makes it’s way down the escarpment in two lengthy cascades.  Here the waterway is jumbled with chucks of dolomite that have had the shale eroded out from under them.

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Beavers have dammed Grindstone Creek to create a pond for their habitat.  The pond and the little waterfall created by the dam have frozen over and we didn’t see any beaver foot prints in the snow around the dam.  Beavers do not hibernate in the winter but live off of bark they strip from trees.  They keep a stash of branches in the ponds but we also saw several places where they had been feeding.

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We see less wildlife in the winter but there is always evidence of their presence.  Distinct footprints in the snow as well as unique feces allow one to identify the creatures that are not hibernating.  We found a set of squirrel footprints that led between food stashes. Squirrels stash many more nuts than they actually need to survive the winter and they forget most of them.  Grey squirrels bury their stashes and the ones they forget often sprout, meaning that the squirrels are beneficial in the spread of nut bearing trees. Unfortunately, the red squirrel piles it’s stashes of nuts on top of the ground where they dry out which means they have a negative impact on the spread of nut trees.  The picture below shows two places where the snow has been dug up and the leaves turned over in search of caches of food.

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Water seeps out of the shale along the sides of the Grindstone Creek ravine and forms ice sculptures.

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When we returned to the falls we found a group of slackliners enjoying an outing at the gorge.  Slackline is different from tightrope walking in the way the wire is tensioned. For a traditional tightrope the wire is tightly tensioned and the walker maintains their centre of balance above the wire.  A slackwire is made of nylon webbing and is left to stretch and bounce like a trampoline.  The walker moves the wire to keep it under their centre of balance while making the crossing. The start of Slacklining dates to 1976 and is credited to Adam Growsowsky.  Gerald Situ of Toronto Slackliners is seen in the photo below as he makes his way across the falls. Notice that in spite of the freezing temperatures the crossing is made barefoot. The term highlining can be applied when the line is strung above a waterfall like the group was doing over Grindstone Falls.  We witnessed one walker leap off the cliff face with just his harness attached to the line and go sailing out into open air above the rocks below.  The cover photo shows this crossing in context.

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Waterdown became a source of cut stone which was used extensively in the early construction of the town.  Stone quarried here was taken to Toronto for use in the construction of King’s College.  A set of cut stone abutments stand at the top of the waterfall.

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As you walk along Mill Street you find that there are still remnants of the industrial past of the community.  Typical of mill worker’s cottages from the mid 1800’s the ones pictured below have survived. Originally three homes, this building has been renovated to have just two active doorways. The central unit retains it’s original arched window, unlike the end units.

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At the corner of Mill Street and Dundas Road stands a cut stone hotel built in 1824.  It occupies the site of the original log school house.  One of the oldest stone structures in Southern Ontario it is called the American House and the building has had at least one notable modification. The third window from the end on the ground floor has a stone arch set above it.  This arch likely led to the stables in the rear of the hotel similar to the Exchange Hotel in Hillsburgh.  The stone mason that filled the arch in did an excellent job of matching the original stone work.

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East Flamborough’s township hall was built in 1857 and served as the local government seat until 1974.  The Waterdown public library is now housed in the iconic building.

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Google maps link: https: Smokey Hollow

Toronto Slackline: torontoslackline.ca  On FaceBook: Toronto Slackline

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