From The Heights. #36 From The Past.

Good morning everyone! It is a beautiful, sunny morning here at the Heights. We did get a bit of snow again so everything is nice and white once more. It was only about 2 inches (5cm) though, so nothing too exciting. But winter continues. Today it should be 39F (4C), it will stay like this until Monday, then the temperature drops, considerably. So, it will feel a bit more winter like.

Speaking of summer. It was a beautiful sunny day, and very calm, so I decided to take my canoe and head out to a small lake and look around a bit. There was an old railway town along that lake which I had been to before and I had found some nice old bottles from the 1800s.

Nice calm lake by the railway tracks.

The railway was built through the area in the early 1880s, so everything found at this site was fairly old. That is old for this area. Anyway, I thought this would be an ideal time to go back and look around some more. First I stopped at my favorite restaurant for breakfast and Krissy asked what my plans were for the day, so I told her.

“And you stopped here to ask me to come with you!” she exclaimed, “that’s great.” That was not really on my “to do” list, but that is okay. Off she went and came back saying her mom gave her permission to take the day off and come with me. Off we went to a certain small lake and put the canoe in and away we went. The lake was bigger than it looked from the highway but it still did not take us long to get there.

Another look at the lake.

The lake was just so beautiful and glassy that day, perfect for a canoe. We easily glided through that calm water. Then we stopped at the spot and pulled the canoe ashore. There was nothing but wild rose bushes along the embankment up to the railway tracks. “I will scratch my legs terribly walking up there,” said Krissy. “That is why I said to wear jeans,” I reminded her.

“I brought jeans,” she said, “but I thought it would be too hot to wear them all the time.” So she changed and up we climbed, crossed the tracks and went up on some rocks. There was not much around to suggest a townsite, but it really was not a town, as such, more of an encampment of temporary buildings.

The railway tracks, though not quite in the same area, but close by.

It was shut down around 1905 and moved to a location 2 miles further west where a larger town was built which stayed occupied until the 1950’s. That place had a hotel, store, small school and railway station with offices, post office and telegraph office. There were quite a few houses as well. However, back to our location.

There were houses, a small railway station with telegraph and post offices, plus a small store. But what we wanted was the places they used for dumping their garbage. There were several such places and two were quite large. Mostly they were full of the remains of very well rusted tin cans and other metal objects. We found some stoneware snuff jars in perfect condition, except for the long lost cork lids.

Another look.

These dated to the late 1800s. Krissy was digging in one spot and getting a bit discouraged because she was not finding anything. Then she dug up a beautiful green ink bottle from the 1880s, also in perfect condition. That got her very excited! I found one too a little later, slightly different in shape and light blue. Then we decided to stop for lunch.

I should probably stop too so this does not get too long, but I will write the ending soon. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.