Port Colborne Ontario Guide 1 in Color Images: Saving Our Historical past One Picture at a Time (Cruising Ontario) (Quantity 167)

Port Colborne is a metropolis on Lake Erie, on the southern finish of the Welland Canal. The unique settlement, referred to as Gravelly Bay after the shallow, bedrock-floored bay upon which it sits, dates from 1832 and was renamed after Sir John Colborne, a British battle hero and the Lieutenant Governor of Higher Canada on the time of the opening of the southern terminus of the First Welland Canal in 1833 when it was prolonged to succeed in Lake Erie.Through the Eighties, American vacationers from the southern states started constructing trip houses on the lakeshore of the western fringe of the city. Earlier than lengthy, a whole gated neighborhood of vacationers from the south referred to as Port Colborne their house throughout the summer time months. Immediately, the picturesque road of Tennessee Avenue remains to be house to many of those authentic trip houses and buildings, in addition to the unique stone and wrought iron resort gates. The road boasts some immaculately maintained examples of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Southern structure.The Welland Canal was initially established as an answer to summer time water shortages that plagued a grist mill operation close to St. Catharines. William Hamilton Merritt, the mill proprietor, diverted water from the Welland River into Twelve Mile Creek. He needed to make the channel deep sufficient to permit boats to go by means of a sequence of locks down the escarpment into Twelve Mile Creek and on to Lake Ontario.The Worldwide Nickel Firm (now Vale) has been one of many metropolis’s principal employers for the reason that opening of a refinery in 1918. Benefiting from cheap hydroelectricity from producing stations at close by Niagara Falls, the refinery produced electro-refined nickel for the battle effort, and continues in operation immediately.Port Colborne was one of many hardest hit communities throughout the blizzard of 1977. 1000’s of individuals had been stranded when the town was paralyzed throughout the storm.Maritime commerce, together with supplying items to the camps for the laborers who labored on the primary canal, ship restore and the provisioning commerce, was, and nonetheless is, an essential a part of Port Colborne’s financial system. Port Colborne was a closely industrial metropolis all through many of the early twentieth century. A grain elevator, two trendy flour mills, a Vale nickel refinery, a cement plant and a blast furnace had been main employers. A number of of those operations have closed over the previous thirty years, whereas others make use of lots much less residents because of modernization and cutbacks.Port Colborne has been profitable in attracting agro-business operations which course of corn into merchandise similar to sweeteners and citric acid. The financial system has step by step shifted in direction of tourism and recreation, profiting from the scenic fantastic thing about the lakeshore.The Port Colborne Historic and Marine Museum, situated close to the centre of city, is a useful resource for native historical past and archival analysis. Along with a set of historic buildings and artifacts, it opened up the “Marie Semley Analysis Wing” to foster analysis into native historical past; it was named to commemorate the long-standing efforts of a neighborhood resident who devoted hours to the museum.