The Founding of Dunnville

Photo by Alan L Brown - August 23, 2004

Plaque Location

The County of Haldimand
In Dunnville, on the river side of Main Street West north of the bridge across from Church Street

Plaque Text

The construction of a dam and canal designed to feed water from the Grand River to the new Welland Canal fostered the development of a settlement here during the late 1820s. A town plot, named Dunnville after John Henry Dunn, Receiver General of Upper Canada, was laid out and, following the opening of the Feeder Canal to navigation in 1829 the community thrived as a transshipment point and industrial centre. By 1832 it contained three store houses, a grist, fulling and carding mill and three saw mills. After the completion of the Second Welland Canal in 1845, Dunnville gradually lost its position as an active Lake Erie terminus for that waterway, but it continued to prosper and in 1860 assumed the status of a village.

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